A Bread To Love

 

This is going to be my last Bread Baking Babes bread for a while, because I find that I don't make bread much anymore and Sweetie has no willpower to not eat fresh bread and is happy I'm baking less. Better for our waistlines, too. I'll still be blogging and checking on the 16th of each month to see what the others have been up to...and you should too.

The good news is that I'm Kitchen of the Month for December 2023 and I chose a wonderful bread - Fougasse. This one is often called Leaf Bread, too, because the bread is shaped like a large leaf (or Christmas tree!) and you cut the leaf veins so that this sort of flat bread looks like a leaf and tears or breaks apart for sharing very easily.

I made two versions of fougasse for this challenge. The first, which ended up being shaped similar to a Christmas Tree, was with chopped rosemary and topped with more rosemary and with sea salt. It makes your house smell delicious as it bakes and is quite tasty.

The second fougasse was shaped like a verrrry wide square-ish leaf and was flavored with both chopped walnuts and crumbles of blue cheese. That made a nice combination and went well with our bean soup. That's the photo at the top. You can see that it's an unusual shape for a leaf...and that the blue cheese melted and ran, which made it taste even better, I assure you.

The recipe given makes enough dough for 4 fougasse of about 450 grams each. Before you decide to cut the recipe in half or quarters, remember that if your fridge has room, this dough can sit in your fridge for many days, getting a better flavor each day, so you can bake the four loaves over a week or so and have lots of fresh, delicious, fragrant bread.

Fougasse is pretty flat but it should be fairly fluffy inside but it does have a lot of thin crustiness because of the cuts that create the veins. 

If you bake along with us and want to be a Buddy, be sure and email me your URL and a photo and a short description of your bake and I'll send you a Buddy badge. You have until Dec. 29th to get that to me at plachman -at-sonic-dot-net.

Be sure to check out the bakes that the other Babes have done, too. We have a very creative and supportive group and I will miss the monthly bakes and especially the bakers!

I forgot to mention that this bread makes a great gift, too...which is handy as it is gift giving season.

Let's think about baking this...You can use sourdough starter or dry yeast, you can flavor it with rosemary and sea salt...my favorite...but you could use other seasonings like oregano, basil, lemongrass...or use seeds like poppy seeds or sesame seeds to enhance the bread. Consider adding cheese, like a good strong blue cheese, and maybe some walnut pieces. Maybe you would like citrus zest added, or perhaps olives.

Let's see what you come up with. The basics of the challenge are to make a leaf shaped, slashed bread, preferably with the recipe(s) below, but you decide the shape, flavorings, and if you will use sourdough starter or not.

Fougasse with Rosemary and Sea Salt

Preferment:
1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 cups lukewarm water (not hot), divided
2 cups bread flour, divided

Mix together 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast, 1 cup lukewarm water and 1 cup bread flour in a bowl. Cover lightly and let sit for 1 hour. Add an additional 1 cup lukewarm water and add additional cup bread flour and mix until all new ingredients are incorporated. Let sit for at least an hour for flavor (or refrigerate overnight, then bring to room temperature).

Dough

all of Preferment

4 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 cup water, divided
1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
4 - 5.5 cups unbleached bread flour
2 teaspoons salt
2-3 tablespoons olive oil from brushing

1-2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

1/2 - 1 tablespoon fresh rosemary for top of dough

1-2 tablespoons sea salt for sprinkling

In the bowl of a stand mixer place the Preferment.  Add 3 tablespoons of the olive oil and mix briefly just until the oil is mixed in.

Make sure the water for the dough is lukewarm, not hot. Take 1/4 cup of it and add the dry yeast in a small bowl. Let sit 5 minutes until foamy.

Add the rehydrated yeast, the rest of the warm water, and about half the flour (2 cups) to the mixture in the stand mixer bowl. Mix with the paddle.

Switch to the dough hook. On slow speed add the remaining flour, a half cup or so at a time, adding only a few tablespoons at a time toward the end. The dough will be soft. Add the salt and then knead with the dough hook on low to medium low speed for about 6 minutes, until the dough cleans the sides of the bowl and is smooth. If necessary, add up to an additional cup flour so that dough is soft but firm. Turn kneaded dough out on a lightly floured board or counter and knead a few turns to make sure all flour is incorporated.

Form the dough into a ball. With the remaining tablespoon olive oil, oil a large bowl and turn the dough ball in the oil to coat. Cover with oiled plastic wrap or a clean shower cap and place in a warm place and let rise until doubled in bulk. This usually takes a couple of hours but check often. Dough is ready when a finger poked into the dough leave an indent that stays.

Shaping: About an hour before baking the fougasse, punch dough down, and turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board. Knead a few times to get rid of the extra trapped gas. Divide it into four pieces weighing about the same. Take one of the pieces and knead in the chopped fresh rosemary, then press it out into a leaf shape. Use your clean hands to press it to about 10-11-inches on a side and about 1/2 - 1-inch high. Wet hands if necessary, so that dough doesn't stick. (I shaped it into a tall triangle.)

Place the shaped dough onto a piece of baking parchment which has been placed on a baking sheet. Using a bench scraper or stiff plastic scraper or something similar, cut into the dough to make leaf 'veins' - see photo at top of post. Use your fingers to gently spread out the dough to open up the cuts. Keep the leaf shape. Repeat if desired with the other pieces of dough, making four leaves, which can be flavored differently if desired, or store rest of dough, covered, in fridge, until ready to use.

Cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap, oiled side down, and let rise for about 30 minutes. Leaf will get puffy. If holes close up, gently open them again with your fingers after removing the plastic wrap.

While leaf is rising, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. If you have a pizza stone, put it in to preheat too.

Use a pastry brush to lightly brush the surface of the leaf with olive oil, then sprinkle with some fresh rosemary and sea salt.

Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until dark golden brown. Remove from oven, cool a bit on a wire rack after having removed it from pan and parchment. Serve while still warm, breaking off pieces of the leaf, or cutting into portions.

Don't care for rosemary and sea salt? Just replace those with your favorite enhancements.

or, for Sourdough:

Sourdough Fougasse
2 cups 100% hydration sourdough starter
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 cup water, divided
1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
4 - 5.5 cups unbleached bread flour
2 teaspoons salt
additions like cheese, nuts, herbs, citrus peels, olives, etc.

In the bowl of a stand mixer place the sourdough starter. Add 3 tablespoons of the olive oil and mix briefly with the paddle attachment just until the oil is mixed in.

Make sure the water is lukewarm. Take 1/4 cup of it and add the dry yeast. Let sit 5 minutes until foamy.

Add the yeast, the rest of the warm water, and about half the flour. Mix with the paddle.

Switch to the dough hook. On slow speed add the flour, a half cup or so at a time, adding only a few tablespoons at a time toward the end. The dough will be soft. Add the salt and then knead with the dough hook on low to medium low speed for about 6 minutes, until the dough cleans the sides of the bowl and is smooth. Turn out on a lightly floured board or counter and knead in most of the rosemary, leaving about a teaspoon for the top.

Form the dough into a ball. Oil a large bowl (not metal) and turn the dough ball in the oil to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm place and let rise until doubled in bulk. It took mine four hours, but even my 'warm' place wasn't as warm as it should have been.

Punch dough down, turn out of the bowl onto a lightly floured surface, knead a few times to get rid of the extra trapped gas.

Use the Instructions for Shaping and Baking in the recipe above.

Elizabeth gave us the recipe to include weights. I'm a complete fool when it comes to conversions, but I think Elizabeth knows what she is doing. Thank you Elizabeth!

FOUGASSE WITH ROSEMARY AND SEA SALT
(for 4 fougasses)

PREFERMENT
1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast [0.75 grams]
2 cups lukewarm water (not hot), divided [480 grams?]
2 cups bread flour, divided [240 grams]

DOUGH
all of Preferment [720 grams?]
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided [50 grams]
1 cup water, divided [240 grams]
1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast [0.75 grams]
4 - 5.5 cups unbleached bread flour [480-660 grams]
2 teaspoons salt [12 grams]

TOPPING
2-3 tablespoons olive oil from brushing
1-2 tablespoons chopped rosemary
1-2 tablespoons sea salt for sprinkling

SOURDOUGH VERSION:
2 cups 100% hydration sourdough starter [720??? grams]
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided [50 grams]
1 cup water, divided [240 grams]
[strike]1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast[/strike]
4 - 5.5 cups unbleached bread flour [480-660 grams]
2 teaspoons salt [12 grams]
additions like cheese, nuts, herbs, citrus peels, olives, etc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If I were going to make a wild version, I think I might be a bad BBBabe and try following this previous wild yeast one I made, but leave out the poppy seeds:

https://etherwork.net/blog/wild-fougasse-with-poppy-seeds/.

Karen converted the starter, flour and salt for half the original recipe to grams. Thank you Karen!

1 cup starter = 227 to 241 grams
2 to 2 3/4 cups flour = 240 to 330 grams (I used 260 grams)
1 teaspoon table salt = 6 gram

Cathy of Bread Experience has a great post which includes instructions and photos for shaping, as well as a delicious spelt and asiago cheese version!

Lots of Bread Flour So Fougasse

My favorite neighbor ordered a super sized bag of Sir Lancelot flour from King Arthur Flours. Since the smaller sizes of flour were out of stock, he figured that we could share and we did. He is most generous. This particular bread flour has wheat flour, unbleached, but also barley flour. It's a great bread flour, so I wanted to make bread as soon as he brought the bag over and left it on the porch.

He made bagels. I made fougasse, a leaf shaped bread that is a bit like focaccia. My original plan had been to knead in some chopped walnuts in half the bread dough, and knead in chopped mixed herbs into the other half of the dough, but I ended up just using a pastry brush to brush the top of each lightly with olive oil and then sprinkling on chopped fresh rosemary and then a sprinkle of coarse sea salt. Sweetie loved it that way!

This recipe makes four leaves, each about 10 inches on a side. Since the shape is a rough triangle, that gives you some idea of the size. I baked mine on parchment which was set on 12-inch pizza pans and that worked very well. You can also shape on parchment on a larger pan. You can shape it on parchment on a pizza peel, or, by adding some cornmeal under the dough to allow the dough to roll onto a pizza stone, shape it right on the peel. If not using a pan, bake on a preheated pizza stone.

I gave one loaf to a favorite relative for his birthday, and one loaf to the neighbor who gave me the lovely bread flour. Sweetie and I ate most of the first one on the day it was made, as part of our dinner. Our second one was baked four or five days later and enjoyed with a meal, too. Although this bread is delicious all by itself, it is also great dipped into a mixture of olive oil and good balsamic vinegar. Sort of gilding the lily, but so good.

You can bake the four loaves over time, or bake them all at once. I was using my toaster oven, so each baked by itself and two during each baking session seems right, but if you are using a full oven you may be able to bake all four at once. Just be sure to switch the pans out halfway through baking time...putting those on the top rack down and moving those on the lower rack up.

It's been pretty hot here for the last few days, so no baking going on at the moment, but I did enjoy local strawberries for the first time for breakfast. Stay safe and healthy dear reader.

 Fougasse with Rosemary and Sea Salt
Preferment:

1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

2 cups lukewarm water (not hot), divided

2 cups bread flour, divided

Mix together 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast, 1 cup lukewarm water and 1 cup bread flour in a bowl. Cover lightly and let sit for 1 hour. Add an additional 1 cup lukewarm water and and additional cup bread flour and mix until all new ingredients are incorporated. Let sit for at least an hour for flavor (or refrigerate overnight, then bring to room temperature).

Dough

all of Preferment

4 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 cup water, divided
1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
4 - 5.5 cups unbleached bread flour
2 teaspoons salt
2-3 tablespoons olive oil from brushing

1-2 tablespoons chopped rosemary

1-2 tablespoons sea salt for sprinkling

In the bowl of a stand mixer place the Preferment.  Add 3 tablespoons of the olive oil and mix briefly just until the oil is mixed in.

Make sure the water for the dough is lukewarm, not hot. Take 1/4 cup of it and add the dry yeast in a small bowl. Let sit 5 minutes until foamy.

Add the rehydrated yeast, the rest of the warm water, and about half the flour (2 cups) to the mixture in the stand mixer bowl. Mix with the paddle.

Switch to the dough hook. On slow speed add the remaining flour, a half cup or so at a time, adding only a few tablespoons at a time toward the end. The dough will be soft. Add the salt and then knead with the dough hook on low to medium low speed for about 6 minutes, until the dough cleans the sides of the bowl and is smooth. If necessary, add up to an additional cup flour so that dough is soft but firm. Turn kneaded dough out on a lightly floured board or counter and knead a few turn to make sure all flour is incorporated.

Form the dough into a ball. With the remaining tablespoon olive oil, oil a large bowl  and turn the dough ball in the oil to coat. Cover with oiled plastic wrap or a clean shower cap and place in a warm place and let rise until doubled in bulk. This usually takes a couple of hours, but check often. Dough is ready when a finger poked into the dough leave an indent that stays.

Shaping: About an hour before baking the fougasse, punch dough down, and turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board. Knead a few time to get rid of the extra trapped gas, and divide it into four pieces weighing about the same. Take one of the pieces and press it out into a leaf shape. Use your clean hands to press it to about 10-11-inches on a side and about 1/2 - 1-inch high. Wet hands if necessary so that dough doesn't stick. (I shaped it into a tall triangle.)

Place the shaped dough onto a piece of baking parchment which has been placed on a baking sheet. Using a bench scraper or stiff plastic scraper or something similar, cut into the dough to make leaf 'veins' - see photo at top of post. Use your fingers to gently spread out the dough to open up the cuts. Keep the leaf shape. Repeat if desired with the other pieces of dough, making four leaves, or store rest of dough, covered, in fridge, until ready to use.

Cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap, oiled side down, and let rise for about 30 minutes. Leaf will get puffy. If holes close up, gently open them again with your fingers after removing the plastic wrap.

While leaf is rising, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. If you have a pizza stone, put it in to preheat too.

Use a pastry brush to lightly brush the surface of the leaf with olive oil, then sprinkle with rosemary and sea salt.

Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until dark golden brown. Remove from oven, cool a bit on a wire rack after having removed it from pan and parchment. Serve while still warm, breaking off pieces of the leaf, or cutting into portions.

 To make focaccia instead of fougasse, follow this link

Leaf Bread for Fall

The bodacious Bread Baking Babes are celebrating autumn this month by baking Fougasse, a delightful leaf-shaped bread, at the invitation of Elizabeth of blog from OUR kitchen, our Kitchen of the month.


Our regular posting day, the 16th of the month, coincides this month with World Bread Day, the annual event that encourages us to bake bread. We are asked also to honor the fact that we have enough food, a situation that isn't true for too many people in the world.

So today we celebrate both World Bread Day and baking with the Babes by baking fougasse, a shaped flatbread.

Fougasse is perfect for fall since it is traditionally shaped like a leaf, with the dough cut and stretched in such a way that, once baked, there is a lot of crustiness. That's a lovely thing in a flatbread like this, especially if you are serving it as an appetizer as I did, or with a nice cooler weather soup or stew.

Elizabeth gave us a couple of choices for the bread dough but indicated that we could also use our own recipe. I'd posted a foccacia recipe during the winter of 2008 and it used sourdough starter, so that's what I used. It made enough dough for me to make two loaves each of two variations. I was inspired by a fougasse that fellow Babe Susan of Wild Yeast had made which used gorgonzola cheese and figs to add flavor and texture to a fougasse which included rye flour.

I only used unbleached bread flour... no rye or other fancy flours this time... and paired the gorgonzola cheese with chopped walnuts. The result was awesome! There was no need for any additional butter or oil, although we did find that some slices of Golden Delicious apple went really well with that version of fougasse.

As Elizabeth days, "Because fougasse is baked on a stone instead of on an oiled pan, there are more crispy bits. Not too crispy though... it's juuuuust right! Of course, it can be cut with a knife but we think that fougasse tastes better torn apart."

The other half of the dough was flavored with freshly chopped herbs...Italian parsley, basil, and rosemary. I'm grateful to have not only enough for myself and Sweetie, but enough to share. I gave one of the herbed loaves to our renter because she loves bread and is on a fixed income so it helps her stretch her food budget a bit, too. Seems appropriate as we honor World Bread Day.

Try baking this easy and delicious Fougasse yourself...you'll be glad you did. There is only one rising, only a few ingredients, and trying out the shaping is fun and gives you another skill in the kitchen. You can choose your own additions or bake it plain and slather on the butter or dip the torn pieces of fougasse bread in a mixture of good olive oil and balsamic vinegar for an Italian touch. If you do bake it this month (by October 29th) be sure and send an e-mail with a link to your post (or a description of the bread and if you liked making it added to the e-mail if you don't blog) and a photo of the finished bread to Elizabeth to become a Bread Baking Buddy. She'll send you a badge and include you in the roundup.

Elizabeth was daring and baked her fougasse on a grill. I baked mine in the oven. Since I was using a baking stone (actually a pizza stone)

I shaped each leaf on a piece of baking parchment which I had laid on a wooden tray. Each was covered with oiled plastic wrap to rise. No corn meal was used on the parchment paper since I slid the bread and parchment paper on to the baking stone, then removed the loaf directly to the stone half way through baking (throwing the used parchment away).

Each loaf was shaped to fit the stone and they were baked one at a time. One day I'll have to spring for a larger stone so that I can bake two at a time. I also added moisture at the start of baking to help with crust development. I put ice cubes into a pie plate below the baking stone, plus sprayed the walls of the oven with water when I put the loaves in. The latter part of the baking time was done without the steam.

Now that you've heard how I did it, do visit the blogs of the other Bread Baking Babes (see links to the right). I'm also sending this over to Susan at Wild Yeast for the weekly Yeastspotting event. This week is sure to be a good one with entries from lots of World Bread Day posts, so check it out.

Sourdough Focaccia (with instructions for making Gorgonzola-Walnut Fougasse and Fresh Herb Fougasse)

2 cups 100% hydration sourdough starter
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 cup water, divided
1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
4 - 5.5 cups unbleached bread flour
2 teaspoons salt
additions like cheese, nuts, herbs, citrus peels, olives, etc.

In the bowl of a stand mixer place the sourdough starter. Add 3 tablespoons of the olive oil and mix briefly with the paddle attachment just until the oil is mixed in.

Make sure the water is lukewarm. Take 1/4 cup of it and add the dry yeast. Let sit 5 minutes until foamy.

Add the yeast, the rest of the warm water, and about half the flour. Mix with the paddle.

Switch to the dough hook. On slow speed add the flour, a half cup or so at a time, adding only a few tablespoons at a time toward the end. The dough will be soft. Add the salt and then knead with the dough hook on low to medium low speed for about 6 minutes, until the dough cleans the sides of the bowl and is smooth. Turn out on a lightly floured board or counter and knead in most of the rosemary, leaving about a teaspoon for the top.

Form the dough into a ball. Oil a large bowl (not metal) and turn the dough ball in the oil to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm place and let rise until doubled in bulk. It took mine four hours, but even my 'warm' place wasn't as warm as it should have been.

Punch dough down, turn out of the bowl onto a lightly floured surface, knead a few time to get rid of the extra trapped gas.

At this point check out the directions below to make fougasse. To make focaccia, follow this link.

These were the instructions we were given. Notes on my variations are in italics below:

1. Mix, knead and allow your favourite bread dough to rise to double (I used the focaccia recipe above). If you are adding anything like olives, sun-dried tomatoes, onions, caramelized garlic cloves and/or walnuts, mix them into the dough near the end of kneading it or on the first turn of the dough (I added mine once the dough had risen and was ready to shape...just kneading the cheese and nuts into half the dough, then cutting that dough ball in half and shaping each into a leaf shape...then doing the same for the other half of the dough by adding the herbs for the second two loaves which were each shaped into a leaf shape:

for the nut/cheese versions:
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup crumbled gorgonzola cheese

for the herbed:
1 tablespoon EACH chopped Italian parsley, basil and rosemary).

2. If you are wanting herbs/spices on top, please add them just before baking.

3. Shaping: About an hour before baking the fougasse, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and press it out into an oval (or a rectangle; or a circle). Using a floured rolling pin, roll the dough out until it is about 1 cm (1/2 in.) thick. (I shaped it into a tall triangle.)

4. Sprinkle corn meal (to act as ball-bearings) on the peel - or an upside-down cookie sheet. Lay the shaped dough on the peel. Using a pizza wheel and "swift, decisive strokes" cut a design of a leaf or ladder into the dough. Take care not to cut through the outer edges. From the edges, pull the dough outwards to make sure the cuts are spaced. (I used parchment paper instead, but the dough with a stiff plastic scraper, then gently spread out the dough to open up the cuts to create the leaf shapes...sort of triangular)

Cover with a clean tea towel followed by a plastic grocery bag and allow to rise. (Robertson allows the shaped bread to rise first and does the slashes at the last minute. Naturally, because of my stellar reading skills, I didn't notice that until I had already made fougasse several times by slashing it directly after shaping it.) (I did notice that I had to open up {gently} some of the gaps that had closed up during the rising time. Since my loaves were on parchment and covered with oiled plastic wrap, it was easy to uncover them and gently move the dough to open up the shape again.)

5. Just Before Baking: Drizzle with olive oil and scatter coarsely ground sea salt over top. (You can also do this step just after the bread is baked; that is what Robertson suggests. Or you can forget to add the olive oil at all, as I did the last time.) (I skipped the olive oil and salt part since the additions were flavorful enough.)

6. Baking in the Oven: Put a pizza stone on the middle or top shelf of the oven and turn it to 400F (200C) (I used 450 degrees and added steam with ice cubes and water spray for extra crunch in the crust). Transfer the fougasse onto the hot stone and bake for about 15 minutes, turning it around at least once to account for uneven oven heat. (You may need 20 minutes or more of baking time if you want a darker crust.)

7. When the fougasse done, remove it from the heat and allow to cool on a well-ventilated rack. To serve, break it apart and dip it into good quality olive oil with herbs if you want.

Thank you Elizabeth for a wonderful, delicious, will-make-this-again challenge. My only other attempt at making fougasse was a dud so it was a lot of fun to do it again and discover that it is a great bread. The ultimate test is how quickly it is gone. All four loaves were finished in less than two days (with Straight Shooter having almost a whole one for breakfast yesterday!) so it truly was a success.