Focaccia Bread....Yummy Yummy And Interesting.

A Focaccia

Focaccia is a typical Italian type of bread similar to pizza but using a filling as opposed to topping. It is bread with yeast. It can be made with whatever type of flour and filling you want.  The focaccia recipe I would like to share with you today is with all purpose flour and a filling made up of pitted sliced black olives, capers, oregano, chili pepper, sun dried tomatoes, garlic and oil.
You will need:
-  1 kg of all purpose flour.
-  30 gms. of fresh yeast. The yeast must be fresh as opposed to stale.
-  30 gms. of sugar.
-  15 gms. of salt.
-  625 ml. of luke warm water.
-  5 Tbsp. sliced black olives.
-  3 Tbsp. capers.
-  2 Tbsp. oil.
-  2 Chili peppers sliced.
-  12 sun-dried tomatoes.
-  1/2 Tbsp. oregano.
-  2 cloves garlic.
-  Sesame seeds for decoration.
Method:
The bread:
To save you the trouble of kneading, use a blender with a dough hook.
-  In the blender bowl, add the flour and the salt mix well  and make a hole in the middle.
-  Divide the luke warm water into two.
-  In one half add in the fresh yeast and the sugar, dissolve well and immediately pour (before it grows cold) into the flour crater and start blending on no. 1. about  1/2 minute until the flour absorbs the yeast
-  Start adding the rest of the water --slowly slowly-- and blend. Increase blending speed to no. 3.  When you see that the dough wraps itself around the hook ( as in photo) stop adding water.
 -  At this point you may still have left some water around 100 to 125 ml of water depending on weather and flour conditions. Discard it.
-  The dough now is ready.  Knead some more with blender. Then, by hand for a minute or so and form a ball, place it back into the blending bowl, and put it in any kitchen closet or the microwave. This is to keep it warm, and away from drafts.
-  One and half hours later it should have doubled in size.
Take it out, deflate, knead for a couple of minutes then put it back in the blender bowl and put it back in the closet or the microwave.
-  Forty five minutes later it should nearly double in size.
Now, during these 45 minutes light your oven to maximum heat and prepare your filling.
For the filling:
-  Add olives, capers, chili, sun-dried tomatoes, oil, oreganoand the garlic in a liquifier and pulse a few time not to completely liquify it. Do not add any salt because the sun-dried tomatoes, the olives and the capers are salty enough.
Take out your dough, knead again for 1/2 a minute and cut the dough in two (about 700 gms each).
Using a rolling pin flatten the one half  to the size of your mold with holes as per photo and place half of the filling on it spread and fold dough in half like a calzone (shown in photo).

 

Shape of Calzone (pizza folded in two)
Photo Courtesy Of Wikipedia
On Goog

To cut a long story short,  you have to incorporate the filling IN the dough. Spread again, sprinkle sesame seeds on the surface and put in microwave again for another half an hour to prove for the last time.
For some variety put the other half in a loaf mold , make a deep cut in the dough, and add the other half of the filling and close from the top. Put in a kitchen closet for about half an hour.
After half an hour put both in the oven for 20 minutes.
The photos should give you a general idea of what goes on.
Thanks for reading this far, and certainly wish you luck in making your own bread. You can use the same recipe to make buns, loaves, French bread, whatever.

Lots of kisses, and bon appétit,
Stelio

P.S. I have incorporated the filling instead of making dents with my fingers and topping with olives, capers etc. is because the topping dries up and it is not as good.