Focaccia

Description

Focaccia is an Italain soft flat bread topped with veggies and herbs. Baking is not my kind of thing, but surprisingly this one turned out pretty perfect than I expected. Here are few shots from a daring novice baker.

Ingredients
2½ cup	All-purpose flour
1 tsp	Salt
1 tsp	Sugar
2¼ tsp	Active dry yeast
1 cup	Warm water
2 tbsp	Olive oil (for bread)
2 tsp	Onion ( chopped)
1 clove	Garlic (finely minced)
1 tsp	Coriander leaves
1 pinch	Salt (for topping)
1 tsp	Oil (for sauteing)

Instructions

Yeast Goddess bubbling with full energy.

Mix sugar and yeast in luke warm water and let it sit for 5 minutes. You will be surprised to see what happens. Its will rise as shown above.

Mixing the dough

Sieve all-purpose and salt in a mixing bowl. Add the yeast solution and mix using a wooden spoon. It will be extremely sticky at this point. Transfer to lightly floured surfuce and knead for 15 minutes to make a soft dough.

Kneaded soft dough

Coat a deep bowl with olive oil, place the soft dough ball, brush with some more oil, cover and let it rise for 1 hour.

After an hour

After an hour, this is how it should like, almost doubled in size. Punch down once and knead for a minute and place them in a baking pan. I’ve used a 9″ cake pan which was perfect for my dough size.

Punched dough in a cake pan

Apply oil to the surface of the cake pan and gently press the dough to flatten, cover and let sit for another hour.

Dough doubled again after an hour

It will again rise and doble in size as shown. Now press the dough, making small indentations with your fingertips, something like dotting.. creating small wells. Drizzle olive oil and fill those wells.

Preapared bread dough with topping before baking

Saute onions and garlic with little salt and oil in a separate pan, let cool completely. Spread the mixture over the bread dough, press few corainder leaves in those oil wells. Its all set for baking now.

Finished Focaccia

Preheat oven to 475F, place the baking pan in the middle rack and bake for 13 to 15 minutes. This time specification is for a soft crust, made mine for 17 minutes turned out with hard crust with slighty browing of the herb. Choose desired setting and proceed. When done, cool completely and serve. I usually slice them horizontly, toast for few seconds, spread cream cheese , sprinkle salt and pepper, stuff with leafy veggies and serve it as a breakfast sandwich.