Foccacia

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is foccacia. This week’s host is Sharmini of Wandering Through and you can visit her blog to get the recipe for the bread. Be sure to visit the Tuesdays with Dorie blog and check out the links from the bakers this week.

I really like focaccia bread and this recipe sounded really good. It’s pretty basic dough, with some olive oil added, so the trick is in the method of rising the bread. While I think that all of the bread recipes in this cookbook take a long time, this one takes a really long time! Two one hour plus rising times plus you have to let the dough rise for at least 24 hours in the refrigerator. It’s not really hard, but you certainly do have to plan ahead.

I just baked up one of the parts of dough so far, and it shaped really easily. I don’t know that I have perfect focaccia, as it rose beautifully in some places and other places I think I was too heavy-handed when shaping it so it’s more flat. It tastes really great, but I think it was best hot out of the oven. I had to go to several stores to find a squirt bottle, and then I only remembered to spritz while baking once. So the next batch I will remember to use it and I will see how that impacts the rising and the crust of the other focaccia loaves I bake up.

Recipe from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan, page 143