Sunday, March 30, 2008

Rosemary Focaccia Bread

Brett got to choose this past weekend’s baking endeavor, and he chose to make Rosemary Focaccia Bread from The Taste of Home Baking Book. Taking the role of sous chef, I gladly chopped and sautéed an onion in olive oil. Brett meanwhile studied the recipe and got the yeast, water, and sugar together. I pretty much just watched as he got the dough to form and kneaded it.



After kneading for quite some time, we added the cooled onions and some rosemary. This made for a bit of a mess since it got our whole kneading area very oily. But Brett kept at it until everything was thoroughly mixed. We chose to add only half the onion, because it really looked like a lot. We let it rise once as a ball and then once again after we stretched it out onto a baking sheet.


Then Brett brushed it with some olive oil and sprinkled some more rosemary on top and let it bake. Every time I have seen focaccia being made on TV, they put so much oil in the bottom of the pan, that you’d think the bread was going to float away. But this recipe went very easy on the oil. We just had to grease the pan and sprinkle some cornmeal instead. The bread turned out rustic and beautiful (who could possibly make it into a perfect circle?)


It also tasted great. The rosemary was subtle and not overpowering (which I was worried about) and there seemed to be just the right amount of onion too. I was starving around the time it was cool enough to eat, so my mouth was jumping for joy. The texture was good too, although Brett and I agreed that it was a little on the dry side. Perhaps there was too much flour, or maybe not adding all the onions caused this. Even so, we both enjoyed it and it was certainly the highlight of our meal.

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