Focaccia Bread with Rosemary and Thyme
While I don’t bake bread often, focaccia is one type that I find easy to manage. It contains yeast and requires two separate rises. So you’ll want to make it on a day when you know you’ll be near your kitchen for around three hours. I chose to make it on a rainy Saturday when I knew I would spend the afternoon watching college football and doing some basic chores like laundry.
I went online to look up a few recipes and settled on one by Anne Burrell from the Food Network. Like most recipes I knew I would adapt it to include fresh herbs that I always have on my back deck and my favorite Parmigiano Reggiano cheese that I always have on hand. I also used a bit less oil than Anne suggests. I will provide my adapted version of her recipe at the end of the blog. However you can click here to see her exact recipe and corresponding video.
Dough is now ready to proof for at least 1 hour. A tip: mark the side of your glass bowl with tape or in this case it has lines to make sure it has DOUBLED in size when you let it rise.
Lucky for me I have a stand mixer that is a life saver when it comes to making many things…especially when making dough. It does all of the work for you. I let it run for 5 full minutes on medium to knead the dough properly. Of course if you don’t have a sturdy stand mixer then use the muscles God gave you. I also am grateful for an oven that has a “proof” setting. I’m able to pop dough into the oven and it sets it at just barely warm enough to help dough rise. If you’re not as lucky as I am, no worries, just cover your dough and let it rise for at least one hour in a warm area of the kitchen.
Once the original dough has risen/double, you push it into a large jelly roll pan, making sure you actually create holes in the dough with your fingers…all the way through to the bottom of the pan. From this stage it needs another hour to proof/rise before baking.
I baked my bread on 425 for 20 minutes. Took it out and immediately grated some Parmigiano-Reggiano over the top so it would melt.
This recipe makes a huge pan of bread. So after it completely cooled I sliced it in half. Then half again and placed into zip top bags and put in the freezer for a future meal. The remainder I served alongside my recipe for Rhonda’s Red Sauce that was feature in my blog a few weeks ago. It was a delicious, herbaceous, tender and salty bread to use to sop up that amazing red sauce. Buon Appetito!
A simply delicioso Italian inspired meal.
