Priceless Paintings from W7

Followers of my weekly culinary navel gazing (This Week, I’ve Been Mostly Eating…) will have noticed that Focaccia makes frequent appearances lately. It’s fun to make, and everybody loves it.

On request of some recent party guests, here’s how:

Prepare a plain yeast dough. Per 100g of good long white wheat flour (“bread making flour”), you’d use 4g yeast, 4g salt, 70ml cold water, and a tablespoon of olive oil. Mix flour, yeast and salt, then work-in water and oil. Do not dust your surface when mixing the dough, just work it by tearing with both hands and folding, over and over again for five to ten minutes. Alternatively, you can knead the dough, or use a kneading machine. These are fine, too, but the resulting dough will have smaller and more regular bubbles. Tearing and folding produces an exciting irregularity.

Shape the dough into a ball and transfer into a lightly dusted bowl. Allow to rise for one hour.

Then, cover a baking tray with baking parchment. You’ll need dough from 400g of flour for a large square tray. Quickly and gently roll the dough to size and shape required for your tray, and rest on the parchment.

Allow to rise for another 1 1/2 hours. During this second rising, use a fork or a brush with thick bristles to work olive oil into the dough, every 15 minutes. You should try to work it into the dough, not letting it rest on top. Then let rise again, then massage more oil in. You’ll need at least 150ml of oil for a large tray, and infusing the oil with one or two red chilly peppers pays huge dividends.

Preheat the oven to 210 C (410 F). I prefer a combination of circulated hot air with bottom heat, but top and bottom heat would also be a good choice.

Sprinkle a generous amount of fresh or dried rosemary and crushed rock salt over the focaccia. Give it a final 10 minutes to rise while the oven heats up, then pop it into the oven for approximately 30 minutes.

You’d got to time the whole works so that you take it out of the oven just ten minutes after your guests arrived. Allow five minutes for cooling down, then serve immediately.

Food and Drink cooking, food, recipe