BBA #13: Foccacia

Foccacia, the condensed writeup...

I made a full recipe of the standard, non-poolish, foccacia, and used half whole-wheat flour, half bread flour, with a little added vital wheat gluten to try to compensate for the lower-gluten whole wheat.

Gads that's a lot of olive oil--and I only made 1 cup of the herbed oil using a 'roasted garlic' flavored oil and mixing in dried herbs, not the warm/steep method. Too lazy that night. I still left maybe 1/4 cup of the oil, either never applied or spooned out of the corner where it tended to collect. I can't imagine what *2* cups would look like.

Mine rose energetically between stretches. Still not sure I'm doing this stretch and fold correctly--Chris's blog just gave me a few more pointers to try next time around.

The dough retarded in the fridge overnight. I saw no significant absorption of oil during this period, so I really didn't feel the need to pour on more when it came back to room temperature.

Put walnuts on half as a pre-proof and added grated asiago as a during-bake to the same side. The other side was plain but for the herb oil, to better taste the bread itself. (And to placate younger niece who dislikes cheese and prefers pecans to walnuts for all things.)

Results: good, but not quite the texture I expect in foccacia--not enough holes, mostly. I'd better work on that stretch-and-fold technique. No complaints from anyone on the taste, probably because it's pretty lovely after swimming in all that herbed oil.

There are pics of various stages of unbaked foccacia on Flickr if you click through.