There’s something very satisfying about making bread from scratch. Getting dough under your fingernails is totally worth the hassle. The last time I did this was in February during the post-earthquake bread shortages. I was kneading for Christchurch, sort of. This week I decided to make some foccacia for a potluck my flat was hosting. Salty, olivey, Italiany; definitely a winner.
You will need:
Lots of flour. (The recipe I used suggested 2 and 3/4 cups; I have no idea what they were smoking when they wrote that because that’s definitely not enough. I lost count, but I think I used about 5 cups.)
1 and 1/4 cups warm water
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon active dry yeast (this stuff will last longer if you store it in the fridge)
1 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons olive oil (rice bran oil or “budget cooking oil” would work too)
Top with: coarse sea salt, rosemary and olives
Preheat oven to 190 degrees.
In a bowl sift 3 cups of flour, salt, yeast and sugar. Add water and 1 tablespoon of oil. Mix until doughy. Then sprinkle some flour on your bench and knead dough until smooth and springy. If you skimp on the kneading, the bread won’t be as light so put your back into it. This is when you add all that extra flour. In a clean bowl, pour 2 tablespoons of oil and then roll dough around in it until covered. Leave to rise for 30 minutes.
When dough has risen, stretch it out onto a greased baking tray. You want it to be quite a bit thicker than a pizza. Sprinkle sea salt and rosemary and sliced olives generously over the dough. Another idea is to press chucks of tomato into the surface of the bread; these will blister deliciously into a bed of salt and rosemary. Yum. Bake for 30 minutes or so – until it’s golden and sounds hollow when you tap it.
As an olive fiend, my general inclination is always “nothing but kalamata”. There is something criminal about de-pipping an olive, unless the de-pipper intends to replace the pip with a piece of feta, pimento or a garlic clove. Unfortunately, Uncle John only gives this olive fiend $160 a week so I have had to compromise. In this case, compromise arrives in the form of Pam’s Spanish Pitted Olives. At $1.79 that’s definitely doable. And baked into bread, the difference is barely noticeable.
Serve by itself or as part of a magnificent table spread with guacamole, corn chips, green salad, pasta salad, stuffed capsicum, roast lamb, custard tart, ambrosia and apple pie. Pot lucks are the best.
Foccacia
