How to understand that you’ve finally moved to another city? In this city you start to bake bread.
At first, these were quite timid attempts aimed at a guaranteed result: premium flour, dry yeast. Everything is clear: you have unassembled boxes, graters with a transport company, hungry children, perplexed cats and a mailbox full of letters.
Gradually, you change the powder to a pressed briquette with a one-week shelf life, remember about a successful recipe for Indian cakes or something like that.
Then you start to grow a homemade sourdough for a rye loaf. It doesn’t matter that all the shops in your city are literally littered with rye bread in any rye-wheat ratio: you bake bread.
But when biga begins to grow ripe in the second jar – that’s all, you’ve moved, settled down, dismantled the boxes and even managed to buy a designer lamp in the living room.
While my biga is growing, here’s a recipe for yeast focaccia.
Focaccia is a liquid yeast dough. It can be called liquid with some reservations, but, I assure you, you will more than once or twice want to pour flour during the batch. You are adults – resist! fight! stay within the given proportions!
Chives, rosemary, arugula, shallots, thyme, olives, sweet peppers, tomatoes – any combination of vegetables and herbs is welcome.
Kukkafocaccia
Ingredients
30 g fresh yeast
400 ml/400 g of warm (about 40 °C) water
1.5 tsp salt
8 dl/500 g flour
0.5 dl/42 g of olive oil + a little for greasing
Instructions
- Warm water+yeast. Put this mixture into a large bowl, add salt, then sifted flour. Knead the dough, it will stick a lot. When the mixture becomes homogeneous, add the oil, knead the dough and put the bowl in a warm place for half an hour or an hour: the dough should increase in volume two times.
- Preheat the oven to 225 °C.
- put the dough on a baking sheet with a rectangle of size 30×40. Put something on the dough’s surface in the style of minimalism from vegetables and herbs. Set the dish aside for 15 minutes: during this time the focaccia will start to come out in huge bubbles and this is very good. Grease focaccia with olive oil and place the pan in the oven for 20 minutes.
