Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Bee-yoooo-te-full foccacia from all purpose dough

I've been fiddling with a bread recipe for a while now -- it started out as a recipe for pita bread, but with a few changes it now works for many things. I've made burger buns, blankets for hot dogs, pita bread, and dinner rolls with it. Today I tried a full-size foccacia:

The basic recipe is 3C AP flour, 3C bread flour, 2 C warm water, 5t yeast, 2 t sugar, 1 1/2t salt, 1/3C vegetable oil. I use my KitchenAid mixer. Put 1C flour (either type), yeast, and sugar into mixing bowl, whisk together. Whisk in 1C warm water. Cover and set aside for 30-45 min until foamy. Then dump in all the other ingredients, and turn the mixer (with bread hook) on speed 2 and let it mix for four minutes. Check to be sure that there's no wet flour pushed up on the sides of the bowl (just run a spatula around it). Then run for another four minutes. At this point it should be all mixed, kneaded, and pulling away from the bowl. Gather dough and put into an oiled bowl, turn the dough to coat with oil, and cover with plastic wrap or a lid. Let rise for an hour, then shape into what you want to bake with it. Let the dough rise again for another half hour or so, then bake at 400 degrees. You'll end up with about 1400 grams of dough, which makes 1 dozen pitas, ten burger buns, one full size (13x18") foccacia, or about four small pizza crusts.

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