Taste and Create: Fantastic Focaccia
Baking is not really my forte. Especially breads. Think of all the kneading and waiting for the dough to rise? I’m afraid I don’t have the patience to wait. Though I knew I would have to bake my own bread one of these days. I like cooking things from scratch and there seems to be a tremendous inspiration of breads around the blogs. So this time, when I was paired with KJ of A Cracking Good Egg in the Taste and Create event hosted by Nicole at For the Love of Food, I was drawn to this fantastic foccacia recipe.
Look ma, no kneading! I essentially followed her Fantastic Foccacia recipe except I used 1 tbsp dried yeast instead of the fresh yeast she recommends. What’s great with focaccia is you can simply top it with salt or play around herbs like what I did. For my first focaccia, I topped it with a combination of chopped garlic, and dried thyme and tarragon. The garlic smelled so heavenly while it was baking and wafted around the house. The resulting focaccia was crusty outside, but the inside was another story. It was a bit moist, a bit undercooked and I have to toast again before eating. Hhmm, I wonder what went wrong. Could it be the yeast? My stove top oven? That is something I can investigate on this weekend. Nevertheless, I will certainly be perfecting this focaccia for my taste.
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May 24th, 2008 at 6:25 am
Hi Gay, sorry your foccaccia didn’t turn out the way you hoped. I can’t imagine it’s the yeast. I’ve never tried it with dried yeast, but the blog which originally featured the recipe (Delicious Days) suggests either 20gm fresh yeast or 1 tspn dried yeast. I found 20gm of fresh yeast too much, so use 15gm. It’s just what has worked for me. I hope you try it again. All the best.
May 26th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
At least you tried
Good job!
I’m don’t bake too…breads, cakes….I’m not good at any of them
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
I make focaccia with dried yeast all the time and I must say that a tablespoon of yeast seems like an awful lot for just 2 cups of flour. I use 1+1/4 teaspoons dry yeast for 3+1/2c flour.
And I do knead our dough - it’s really easy and satisfying to knead and only takes about 5 minutes.
I’m wondering if your oven was too hot and so the bread cooked on the outside before the inside could get done. When I use the oven, I bake for 20 minutes at 400F (204C) rather than 15 minutes at 450F (230C).
For comparison, here is our recipe: http://etherwork.net/recipes/flatbread.html#focaccia
June 4th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
[...] from A scientist in the kitchen blogged about A Cracking Good Egg’s Fantastic Focaccia. Gay says “No need to knead this fantastic focaccia, easy to make though my baking skills [...]