Focaccia

In  previous post I have mentioned that I am  a huge fan of  NO Knead Breads.  One of my favorite books is Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking

and their block buster sequel of healthy breads, Healthy Breads in Five minutes a day

Jeff Hertberg M.D. and Zoe Francois, the authors of the above two books have an awesome web site where you can go and get recipes, trouble shoot and their blog is pretty good reading too. I appreciated this when I first started, not only did it answer any questions I had but it gave inspiration too. They even provide their master recipe for white Flour dough so you can give this whole concept a try.

One of the "hazards" of this technique is  occasionally I can forget a tub of bread dough is fermenting away in the back my fridge. This tends to happen more in summer when I am flipping back and forth from the house to the lake.

As a refresher this is what my dough should look like.




But today this is what I found hiding at the back of my fridge in the trailer.



That is some very played out yeast, but it did still smell very good, kinda sourdoughish, so I decided to use it anyway.  What to make, won't make a nice loaf, boule or baggette,  maybe some focaccia for some nice sandwiches? Yeah that sounds pretty good to me. (the amount of dough shown will make two or three focaccia)



First thing I did was generously flour a large surface, which I can tell you in a camping trailer is not an easy thing to find, but I digress, flour the surface, place dough on it and push pull and roll out into a rectangle type shape around 8 or 9 inches by 8 or 9 inches or so.

Hey it could be square also, but somehow just saying square adds a certain pressure to attain perfection. You know that four equal sides thing can be a bummer if your a perfectionist, which I'm not, so retangular it is for me. :O)




Ok so it looks more like an omeba then a rectangle, but simple is the name of this game, not perfection. Get it? Got it? Good.

It should feel nice and smooth (like a baby's behind) and  soft. I used about 1 Tablespoon of olive oil and rubbed it on the dough and then flipped it over and  Slapped it on some parchment paper, tin foil will do but I like to bake with parchment paper, always have, nothing sticks to it and it soaks up excess  grease/oil residue, where as tin foil does neither of those things for me.



Made a slurry of 1 tablespoon of salt, 1 Tablespoon of water and 1 Tablespoon of  Olive oil and brush that on my top after I poked a whole bunch of "dimples" in my dough with my fingers. You are supposed to use the end of a wooden spoon and make it pretty one indentation at a time and symmetrical, one indentation at a time and symmetrical is (again) for perfectionists with time on their hands and those that don't have as many children as I do. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.


I decided to add some asagio cheese and spices, covered it with a tea towel and let rest for about forty minutes.



Start BBQ about 10 to 15 minutes before baking bread as we want it nice and hot  450 hot.

I added a tin pie plate so I can add 2 cups of water to the BBQ when I put my Focaccia in so it will steam like real bakery bread does.

Throw the parchment paper protected dough on to the grill, add your two cups of water to your pie plate, close quick as a bunny and let bake for about 25 minutes. You might need to monitor your BBQ a wee bit and adjust times  (also a wee bit) because BBQ s can be hard to regulate temp wise.

Take dough out and cool.



Yummy tasted even better then it looked.



Even the crumb looked great on this improvised, slapped together attempt to not waste bread dough.