An enriched focaccia

An enriched focaccia


Image by Pomax
This is a carrot and onion focaccia, made after I was wondering what to do with the vegetables that were left over making the soup for a risotto (which didn’t work out… we used sushi rice, which normally actually works just fine. This time round, it very much did not).

Anyway, let’s move on to the recipe. This is a two-day thing.

1) Making some stock

- a liter of water
- four big carrots
- one fist-sized or slightly larger onion
- thyme, oregano, basil, dragon, sage, whatever other "italian herbs" you want, really.
- some salt and pepper

Heat the water, cut up the carrot into smallish chunks, cut the onion into a couple of rings (I like to do them 1cm thickness but it’s a meaningless number =), chuck them in the water, and boil it for a while with the herbs and the salt and the pepper. If you’re using freshly ground pepper, realise that the soup will get more peppery than if you just consume the ground pepper on something dry, because the water will draw out all the peppery goodness.

Once the stock is done, drain the water, use for … something, and set the vegetables aside in a container of some sort. We’ll use them tomorrow.

2) Making some focaccia dough

This is the main reason the recipe spans two days, because you need to have a light, fluffy starter dough sitting around. If you don’t, you have to make this today, then use it tomorrow. If you do, jump straight to the main event.

- starter:

- 2 cups of flour
- 2 cups of water
- .5 tbs yeast
- .5 tsp salt
- 2 extra cups of flour

Mix the yeast with a bit of water until it’s "dissolved" into a uniform liquid. mix the salt into the flour, and then pour the yeast plus the rest of the water into this, and start mixing. I don’t really care how you mix it, I use my hands. Start adding in the additional flour until the dough’s clingy, but lets go from things when you pull it off… so… this is technical stuff.

Let this dough sit for a day. It will become stickier because the dough will slowly hydrate throughout, and that’s fine. Light fluffy starter is good.

2b) The actual dough

The actual dough will be made with the starter, plus some fresh things.

- starter dough
- the carrot/onion mix
- 2 new cups of flour
- half a cup of nice tasty oil

Let’s pause for a moment. This is essential. If you want tasty focaccia, you stick in tasty ingredients. So get some nice olive oil, or some high grade pressed seed oil.

On with the breading: mix the starter dough and the oil, then mix in the flour. once it’s nicely homogenised, work in the vegetables. Since the veggies are pretty mushy by now, you don’t want to work the dough too much after this.

Place dough in a (lightly oiled) tray for rising, and leave for an hour, or 4, depending on how warm or cold it is (you can’t rush dough, unless you have a proofer).

When nicely risen, heat an oven to 260?/500? (if it will go that high, although anything over 220 will technically do the trick… just much slower). Flip the dough onto a baking sheet, dimple it with your finger tips in that typical focaccia dimply pattern, and load it into the oven. At 260? it will take between 15 and 25 minutes to bake, depending on how squishy you like it.

I stopped baking after 15, and then cut it up and froze the pieces, because that way you can finish baking them at some later time while retaining the squish. Squish good. Firm nice, squish better.

These are technical terms. Enjoy your focaccia =D