foccacia Archives - Munchies and Munchkins

As it’s bread week on The Great British Bake Off I couldn’t let it pass without trying my hand at a new bake.

The last few weeks I’ve been going through one of my flatbread addiction phases and they have accompanied a lot of our meals but last night I fancied a change so made a foccacia.

The basic recipe is one I’ve used on numerous occasions to make a rosemary and seasalt foccacia but the beauty of this bread is that you can change it so much just by adding a few herbs or ingredients.

This is a sort of pizza flavoured foccacia with oregano and Sundried tomatoes giving a really summery vibe. I used dried herbs as I was actually feeling too lazy to go out and snip some – and it was cold last night! Fresh would take the flavour up a notch I imagine. It also has a hint of heat because I used chilli and garlic rapeseed oil:

Oregano and Sundried Tomato Foccacia

You will need:

500g of strong white bread flour
1.5 tbsp of oregano
5g of easy bake yeast
350ml of warm water
30ml of chilli & garlic rapeseed oil ( The preservation society )
5g of seasalt
1.5 tbsp of Sundried tomatoes
* some additional oil, salt and herbs for the topping

Mix your oregano, flour and salt in a large bowl. Add your yeast and warm water and make a rough dough before adding your oil and bringing it together into a very sticky dough. Turn onto a floured surface and knead for about 10 minutes. You need to work through the sticky stage, using floured hands and adding more flour to hands as needed. It will become less sticky and more smooth. Then add your Sundried tomatoes and knead for a few more minutes.

Place in an oiled bowl and cover with a teatowel. Leave until doubled in size ( about an hour to an hour and a half).
Preheat your oven to the highest heat setting.
Now knock back and shape into a rectangle on a floured work surface and place into an oiled rectangular baking tray. Cover again and leave for about 45 minutes. Now using your fingers, press deep dimples into the dough and sprinkle with herbs and salt and drizzle with oil.

Place into your oven and cook for approximately 18-20 minutes. If it’s browning too quickly you may want to reduce the heat for the last 10 minutes.

Leave to cool slightly and serve cut into strips with oil for dipping.

I’m joining in with The Great Bloggers Bake Off 2014

And Tasty Tuesdays with Honest Mum

I do apologise for the delay in updating you on my Breads challenge but I have still been baking I promise!

I have actually completed a further 3 bakes in my 50 breads challenge but I am still a long way from my target..oops better get my skates on.

Recipe No.3 was a basic white loaf which I somehow neglected to take a photo of .. Sorry! It was good and I’m surprised that I’ve never tried a plain loaf before. Izzy loved it too. The recipe was from Paul Hollywoods How to Bake book.

Recipe No.4 was a variation on a flatbread recipe that I tried a while back which you can read about hereThe simple addition of Sichuan peppercorns (crushed) and chilli&garlic rapeseed oil made this a super tasty bake. Yum.

They are meant to look rather blackened don’t you know?

Recipe No.5 was Foccacia. I will almost certainly be repeating this recipe within the next fortnight. So so so so good. The recipe I used was from my River Cottage book and you can actually find it on the River Cottage site here

I used my spiced salt ( seasalt, chilli flakes and star anise) along with a chilli and garlic rapeseed oil in my dough and chopped fresh rosemary on top. It was my first attempt and I absolutely loved it.

Before first prove: