BBA Challenge #13 - Focaccia

I find it totally hilarious that my friend Lisa (who blogs at Stop and Smell the Chocolates) guest posted for me one time this summer and what did she post about? Focaccia. A bread machine recipe, in fact. You should totally check it out. (And check out her blog while you’re at it.)

I really had high hopes for this focaccia recipe.

Wait. Let me start again.

This focaccia recipe is a good one. It’s relatively simple and it came with an herb oil recipe that knocked our socks off. In fact, I’ve posted my version here.

However, I did encounter problems. Well, not really problems and not necessarily with the bread itself, but challenges. With other things.

I topped a pizza sized portion with herb oil, sun-dried tomatoes and gorgonzola cheese. I don’t have a lot of photographic evidence, but let’s see if you can figure out the problem here

Before baking:



After baking:



So, yeah. My toppings didn’t go so well, huh?

Now I was able to remove them and the bread itself was wonderful. Mike liked it better even than the Ciabatta. It was fluffy and flavorful.

In the book, Mr. Reinhart tells us that portions of the dough can be frozen for up to 3 months. So, I decided that I would try freezing some and include my results on this post. (Which is part of why this post is so long in coming.)

My results were kind of weird actually.

Lacking specific instructions on what to do, I removed the dough from the freezer and let it mostly thaw in the refrigerator. I removed it from the fridge to let it continue thawing because I thought I would bake it that day. As it turned out, we went out for dinner so I put it back in the fridge.



I took it back out of the fridge the next day and followed the instructions from step 2 on page 166. This focaccia sat out waiting to proof from about 10:30 am until about 3:30 pm. It never proofed.



Can you see how this is not as puffy as the first batch above?

I don’t know if the in and out action with the fridge caused it to wig out and decide not to proof or what. So I finally went ahead and topped it with some Asiago cheese and Salami and baked it just to see what would happen.



The flavor was actually good and it wasn’t hard as a brick like you might think. But it was definitely denser than and not as fluffy as the first (un-frozen) batch.



I’ll bake the other two batches that I still have in my freezer at some point, but I much prefer the un-frozen version.

Overall Impressions:

I have some work to do to figure out how to top the focaccia in creative and interesting ways while dealing with the high baking temperature and not burning the toppings.

Will I make it again? Sure. I would definitely make this focaccia again. But I also might try Lisa’s bread machine recipe.