Cinnamon Rolls

It seems like just yesterday that I made these for the Morning After Mark and Emily Got Married Brunch.  But it wasn’t yesterday, it was more like yestermonth.  As you can tell, I’ve been slow with the uploading of pictures.  But I’ve just completed a giant batch, hopefully enough to last me through my next upload dry spell.

I used this recipe for the first time that day.  I woke up early-ish to make them in time for the brunch and was a little worried.  The dough didn’t look like it had risen properly, it was still somewhat soft and the filling kept inconveniently oozing out.  It took about half an hour between putting the time I sliced them and put them into a pan and the time they started baking (aka, the commute to Tara’s house).  I like to think of that half hour as when the magic happened, as they puffed up even more while sitting in the pan.  The oozing filling also created a nice caramelization affect wherever it wasn’t covered by soft bun.  And, best of all, three pans of this stuff were devoured.  I think that is a testament to deliciousness if I ever saw one

Sadly, since I was in a rush to create, this is the only picture I took of the cinnamon rolls:

That’s right, it’s the remains of the cinnamon and flour on the counter space that I used to roll them up.  And that’s it.  No pictures of them in pans, no indication of how amazingly they puffed up given another 1/2 hour to rise, no nothing.  So you’ll have to trust me.  These cinnamon buns look mighty tasty coming out of the oven.

Because the recipe I took it from makes an insane number of rolls and I didn’t always do the best job halving stuff (butter, I am pointing at you), I am going to go ahead and transcribe it.  It came from one of my favorite sites, The Pioneer Woman.  She does not hesitate to use butter.  And that’s how it should be.

Cinnamon Rolls

2 cups whole milk
½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup sugar
1 pkg. (2-¼ tsp.) active dry yeast
4 cups AP flour
½ - 1 cup AP flour
½ heaping tsp. baking powder
½ scant tsp. baking soda
½ heaping tsp. salt
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
Cinnamon

1- Combine milk, vegetable oil and sugar in saucepan.  Heat until 105 – 115 degrees F.

2- Sprinkle yeast on top and let sit for a few minutes.

3- Add flour and mix to combine.  Mixture will be soft and soupy.

4- Cover and let rise in a warm, draft-free place for approximately an hour or until doubled in size.

5- Add ½ cup AP flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and mix together.  If mixture is still a little soft, add a little more flour.

6- Generously flour surface and pour dough onto surface.

7- Roll dough out into a rough rectangle.

8- Melt butter and pour on top.  Spread with a pastry brush if necessary.

9- Sprinkle sugar on top.  Top with a generous sprinkling of cinnamon on top.

10- Starting on the side furthest away, start rolling cinnamon up.

11- Cut into ½” pieces and place in a dish to bake.  Preheat oven to 400-degrees.

12- Let rise for ½ hour while oven is preheating.

13- Bake for 20 – 30 minutes or until golden brown.  Remove from oven.

14- Brush with glaze of choice and serve warm.

Servings:  3 pans of 9 each.

Rosemary Focaccia

When Martin and I were invited over to a friend’s house for dinner, I wanted to bring something over so I thought and thought … and thought and thought.  I probably spent way too long trying to figure out what to bring.  Dessert is generally my go-to, but Tara had already said she had it covered with a divine-sounding orange dreamsicle cake.  So … I decided to bring bread.  I hadn’t worked with yeast in a while up until that point and hadn’t made focaccia in an even longer while.

The first two times I made focaccia, I was completely new to the bread-making process and just blindly followed the directions of two different recipes.  One created a VERY dry dough I could barely pull into shape and one created one so wet, it was pourable out of the mixing bowl.

I don’t know if one of those ways was actually a right way, but I know I didn’t really like the bread it produced.  So I decided to go by my favorite method, the “slightly tacky, sticking to the bottom of my bowl but NOT the sides” method.  I mixed away and let it do its first rise before pouring it out onto a sheet pan.  I don’t actually have the size pan they were calling for … so I made do.

“Make do” is code for “ghetto-rigged something.”

Spreading it out was kind of a pain.  I had to stop once to let the dough rest for a few minutes before I could get it to fill the pan.

After the second rise (where I absolutely could not believe how much it rose again), I dimpled it with my fingers and brushed it with olive oil and rosemary from my herb plant:

And baked it:

Woah!  This actually kind of looks like focaccia!

Then I cut it up, arranged it prettily in a bowl and brought it to the dinner party.

Arun was there and when he saw the focaccia, he said that it was his favorite type of bread and immediately started digging in.  That made me feel so ridiculously happy, sort of like when you give someone a Christmas present and it turns out to be their favorite one of the year.

So there you go.  Rosemary focaccia bread, like the Gourmet cookbook taught ya.

Note:  I added the flour in increments and probably only used about 3.5 - 4 cups of flour.

Swedish Rye Bread, Take Two

I know what you’re probably thinking - didn’t she already post a recipe for rye bread? What is her deal? What’s up with all the rye bread? Isn’t variety the spice of life?

Indeed it is but when I get a look like this from my Swede:

My toes curl up and my heart sighs and I roll up my sleeves and get ready to churn out some rye bread. I wonder if this is why all recipes make multiple loafs - Martin eats almost an entire loaf when it is fresh out of the oven. The other loaf, thankfully, is more slowly consumed over the course of the week.

I still recall the moment I first realized that I, as well, like rye bread. It was Christmas dinner at Martin’s house and I lifted a piece of dark, buttered, warm-from-the-oven bread to my lips. As I bit in, my eyes grew as wide as saucers. The bread was soft and slightly sweet and om-freaking-gracious delicious. I had to have it. I would never commit to the Atkins diet but had I been, I would have sworn off it forever at that point.

I asked Martin’s mom what her recipe was and she showed me … the mix. It had a giant Swedish flag slapped on the front which is how Martin’s mom found it to begin with. While walking down the aisle of her grocery store, she saw the flash of distinctive blue and yellow and promptly bought out the entire supply.

I haven’t ever been able to find this elusive mix, so I have scoured the internet looking for a recipe. And I finally found one that closely matches the bread of my memories. The color isn’t as dark but that soft, sweet flavor is still there. It is delicious and will turn any Swede to putty in your hands and he will agree to things he normally wouldn’t, like a nice dinner or buying you a bouquet of flowers. Like any good ruler, use your power wisely.

Swedish Rye Bread

Prep time: 40 minutes, 6 hours waiting

2-½ tsp. dry active yeast
¼ cup warm water (110 – 115 degrees F)
½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
⅓ cup molasses
1 tbsp. shortening
¾ tbsp. salt
2 tsp. caraway seeds
½ tsp. anise seeds
Orange zest from 1 small orange
1-½ cups hot water
3 cup unbleached AP flour, separated
2 cups rye flour

Special equipment: Stand mixer

1- Combine yeast and warm water in a small bowl. Let stand 5 – 10 minutes, until foamy.

2- In mixer bowl of a stand mixer, combine brown sugar, molasses, shortening, salt, caraway seed, anise seed and orange zest.

3- Pour hot water over ingredients and let sit until water cools to 110 – 115 degrees F.

4- Place in stand mixer with paddle attachment. Add 1 cup of AP flour and mix until smooth.

5- Stir yeast and add to mixing bowl, beating until smooth.

6- Add rye flour, beating until smooth.

7- Switch to dough hook and slowly add AP flour in ¼ cup increments, up to 2 cups. When dough is tacky and smooth, turn onto a lightly floured surface and let rest for 5 – 10 minutes.

8- Knead dough a little, if necessary, before placing dough in a deep, greased bowl. Turn to coat and cover with saran wrap and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in size.

9- Punch dough down, pull edges to center and turn dough over in bowl. Let rise until doubled.

10- Turn dough out to lightly floured surface and grease a baking sheet. Divide dough into two portions and shape into balls.

11- Cover and let rest for 5 – 10 minutes.

12- Remove to greased baking sheet and cover again with a non-terry cloth towel, and allow dough to rise until doubled.

13- Preheat oven to 375-degrees F.

14- Bake bread for approx. 25 – 30 minutes or until lightly browned.

15- Remove from oven and cool on racks.

Servings: two 8″ round loaves

Sometimes, I wonder how something so simple can bring a man to his knees. Then I stop and thank my lucky stars for the occasional piece of leverage.

Homemade Hamburger Buns

I recently made homemade hamburger buns. I wanted to try out Emily’s barbecue pork recipe but didn’t want to buy buns because Martin and I probably would not eat all. So, the solution was obviously to make more hamburger buns than I would have had to buy.

The cookbook called these hamburger buns perfect and said that we may never buy buns again. I wouldn’t go that far - they were tasty but not “OMG STORE BOUGHT NEVER AGAIN” tasty. They were soft and slightly buttery, with a pillowy crumb. They didn’t have that sort of “sticky” taste you get when you chew into a store-bought bun, that sort of white-bread moistness. I channeled Brian and cut them into squares rather than rounds, to eliminate waste. Besides, most store-bought ones are more square than round anyway.

These were really easy to make the second time around. The first time was almost a perfect candidate for butisuckatcooking. I was rushing and attempting to halve the recipe at the same time. I added eggs without taking into account the halving and when I realized what I did, I almost burst into tears. It wasn’t my first mistake at that point and I should have known better than to rush. Instead, after startling Martin by almost wigging out, I started all over again, much more calmly, and the dough rose perfectly and in a much smaller time frame than given in the recipe.

In fact, I don’t think a bowl exists in my entire apartment that can properly house the dough for these. I put them into my 4-quart mixing bowl and watched as it very prettily domed over it (another picture you won’t see). These rolled out easily and baked very prettily. And, according to the recipe notes, they freeze very well too. We froze about half of them and have been slowly using the rest for sandwiches and toast and the like since Sunday, but I cannot attest to the tastiness of fresh-then-frozen-then-thawed-and-maybe-heated buns quite yet.

Overall, a very successful foray into the yeast world. I am beginning to really like making bread.

Homemade Hamburger Buns

2 cups whole milk

¼ cup warm water (105 – 115 degrees F)
5 tsp. active dry yeast
½ tsp. sugar

¼ cup sugar
½ stick unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and softened
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tbsp. salt
6 to 6-½ cups AP flour

1- Bring milk to a bare simmer in a small saucepan over moderate heat. Remove from heat and let cool to 105 – 115 degrees F.

2- Stir together warm water, yeast and ½ tsp. sugar in bowl until yeast is dissolved. Let stand until foamy, approx. 5 minutes.

3- Add butter and ¼ cup sugar to yeast mixture and mix with paddle attachment at low speed until combined (it is okay if the butter does not entirely mix and is clumped slightly together).

4- Add warm milk and let sit for a minute. Mix until butter is melted.

5- Add eggs and mix until well combined.

6- Add salt and 4 cups of flour and mix, scraping down sides of bowl as necessary.

7- Switch to dough hook and beat in two cups of flour at medium speed, scraping down the sides once or twice. If needed, add more flour in tbsp. increments to make dough pull away from the sides. Beat for 5 minutes more. Dough will be sticky.

8- Transfer to a large oiled bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in bulk, approx. 2-½ hours.

9- Butter two large baking sheets. Punch dough down and turn onto lightly floured surface. Roll out to about a ½” thickness and cut into desired shapes – 3” rounds if available, otherwise 3” squares are fine.

10- Place on cookie sheets and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Let rise until a finger pressed into the dough leaves an imprint, approx. 1-½ to 2 hours.

11- Preheat oven to 375-degrees.

12- Place buns in oven and bake until golden brown and sound hollow when tapped, approx. 14 – 20 minutes per batch. Cool completely before serving.

Servings: 20 buns

This recipe produces copious amounts of dough.

I didn’t have a round cutter so I made do with what I had.

Puffed, golden and slightly buttery pockets of happiness!

Swedish Rye Bread (aka, limpa)

I was rifling through The Gourmet Cookbook and saw a recipe for Limpa, aka Swedish Rye Bread. I asked Martin if that was an accurate translation and he said “limpa” really means “loaf.” So I was making … loaf. Awesome.

I’ve made it twice now and still have not figured out a way to make my loaf not flat and skinny. Next time, I am going to try baking it in a regular bread pan. There is nothing wrong with the taste and texture of the bread, it is just hard to do things like …. eat it as a sandwich and place slices of cheese on it. Other than that, it is just right.

This recipe is really easy to make but I still worry that I’m not getting the kneading technique down pat. Overall, the hardest part was actually finding rye flour - I had to stare at the flour section of the grocery store for awhile before finally locating it. And may I say - I had NO IDEA there was that much flour in the world! Corn flour, potato flour, crazy flour … they could probably turn meat into flour if they put their minds to it.

The taste was like your typical rye bread, soft but with a crisp crust. One time, his mom made a sweet, dark rye bread for Christmas dinner. I know hers was a mix she found at the grocery store, but I would like to replicate something like that so if anyone has suggestions for recipes, please share!

This bread is sort of medium brown with a tight, dense crumb. I punched down the dough about halfway through and am wondering if that contributes to it. I wonder what would happen if I didn’t punch down the dough - does anyone know the physics behind this?

Martin calls this a winner. I think he’s just happy to not be eating bread with high fructose corn syrup (it’s remarkably hard to find bread, even wheat bread, not made with this!) and that’s dark, just the way he likes it. Hopefully, over time, I will perfect this a little better. At least I have a willing tester.

Swedish Rye Bread

2-½ tsp. dry active yeast
¼ cup warm water (105 – 115 degrees F)
Pinch of sugar
¾ cup milk
2 –⅔ tbsp. molasses (not robust or blackstrap)
¼ stick unsalted butter
½ tbsp. anise seeds
½ tbsp. caraway seeds
2 tsp. salt
¾ tsp. finely grated orange zest
1 cup rye flour
1-⅞ to 2-¼ cups unbleached AP flour

1- Stir yeast, warm water and sugar together in mixing bowl until yeast is dissolved. Let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes.

2- Combine milk, molasses and butter in a small saucepan and heat over low heat, stirring occasionally, until butter is melted. Remove from heat and cool to 105 – 115 degrees F.

3- Combine yeast mixture, milk mixture, anise seeds, caraway seeds, salt, zest, rye flour and 1-⅞ cups AP flour in mixing bowl and stir together until dough forms with paddle mixer.

4- Switch to dough hook and knead until smooth and elastic, 8 – 10 minutes. Test dough by pressing with finger. If the spot fills back in, dough is ready.

5- Transfer dough to a buttered large bowl and turn to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in bulk, approx. 1-½ hours.

6- Butter large baking sheet. Punch down dough and turn onto floured surface. Knead 3 – 4 times.

7- Form into a round loaf and transfer to baking sheet.

8- Let rise, covered with a non-terry cloth kitchen towel, until almost doubled in bulk, approx. 1 hour.

9- Preheat oven to 375-degrees F and put rack in middle of oven.

10- Prick loaves with fork to form decorative pattern. Bake until brown and bottom sounds hollow when tapped, approx. 30 – 40 minutes.

11- Transfer loaves to rack to cool.

Servings: One 8″ round loaf

We weren’t very patient, we dug right in.

Please don’t judge me for the mixing bowls galore. I swear my kitchen is normally MUCH tidier than this!

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust / Margarita Pizza

When I saw Will’s recipe for whole wheat pizza, I was instantly intrigued. I’d recently bought some whole wheat in an attempt to inject a little health into our breads, but knew that the process wasn’t as simple as just replacing AP flour with whole wheat flour. Will’s recipe seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it out for myself.

Will noticed that when he replaced 1 cup of AP flour with 1 cup of whole wheat flour produced a dough that was hard to roll out and suggested trying 3/4 cups instead. I felt like even with 3/4 cup of whole wheat flour, my result was still dry so I added water to the dough as I was kneading until it took on a feel that felt soft and not overly dry.

Then I followed the rest of his recipe, letting it rise. I can never tell when a recipe has doubled, so I generally err on the side of caution and let it keep rising. Rolling it out was easy peasy, though my rolling skills are somewhat lacking - non-bloggy shapes are pretty beyond my skillset. I used some bocconcini and ripe tomatoes I had, to make an attempt at a Margarita pizza. The bocconcini melted exactly like good pizza cheese should and I felt the whole wheat added a nice layer of texture from a standard pizza crust. I will be making this crust many more times in the future! It was great!

The technique I used is actually the same as the one I posted earlier, I just replaced 3/4 cup of AP flour with 3/4 cup whole wheat flour.

Around here, I wondered if I really knew what a Margarita pizza was. But I forged on.

Even if I didn’t, I didn’t mind - this still came out tasting great!

Brioche

My friend Kyle recommended The Bread Baker’s Apprentice to me as a good book if I want to really explore bread-making. I checked it out from the library recently and have been flipping through it. The author spends a great deal of time (aka, 1/3 of the book) on descriptions of techniques and explanation of important terms, which I think is really helpful.

There are a lot of different kinds of breads and I decided I needed to try at least one before I returned the book. I settled on brioche, because I’ve been meaning to make brioche for a long time. The book had 3 versions: Rich Man’s, Middle Class and Poor Man’s Brioche. As you could probably have predicted, the only difference is how much butter and how many eggs were used.

Rich Man’s Brioche called for 4 sticks of butter. FOUR. The idea of eating something that had that much butter in it hurt my stomach a little so I settled on Poor Man’s Brioche.

Everything was easy enough - I made the sponge and then made the dough. I’ve used my KitchenAid every time I’ve made dough and it’s always come out great. The most touching I ever do is a press-test to determine how sticky and smooth it is. It seems like, literally, if I do more than that, the dough freaks out and will not rise.

Cookbooks always stipulate a warm, draft-free place for the dough to rise. No part of my apartment is ever “warm” so lately I’ve taken to turning my oven on to warm, then turning it off and placing the dough in it. The dough, unsurprisingly, rises super fast! That is great news for me!

This dough puffed up like a balloon of buttery floury airy goodness. I separated them into rolls and placed them in pans and baked them. I can’t imagine any way I could make this paragraph so boring, this is the most boring paragraph ever. All I did was say … dough puffed and I baked them. Hooray!

We ate this with Amy’s delicious apple butter. The taste was not as buttery as some brioche I’ve had, which is not surprising, but it was still very good. We ate a good third to half of the batch, making me EXTRA happy I did not use four sticks of butter!! The rest, I’ve turned into bread crumbs and have been using on top of different dishes.

This is a very good recipe! Now that I know it wasnt so bad, I might even try my hand at making Rich Man’s Brioche - but only if other people will help me eat it!

Poor Man’s Brioche (with modifications for Rich Man’s / Middle Class Brioche)

½ cup unbleached bread flour
2 tsp. instant yeast
½ cup whole milk, lukewarm

4 large eggs, slightly beaten
3-¼ cups unbleached bread flour
2 tbsp. sugar
1-¼ tsp. salt
½ cup unsalted butter

1 egg, whisked until frothy, for egg wash

1- Changes for Rich Man’s Brioche:
- 1 tbsp. instant yeast
- 5 large eggs
- 3-½ cups unbleached bread flour
- 2-½ tbsp. sugar
- 1-½ tsp. salt
- 2 cups butter
- After dough is finished mixing, spread dough into a sheet pan and immediately refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight. Shape while it is very cold; if it softens or warms up, return to refrigerator to chill.
After shaping, start second proofing.

Ingredient Changes for Middle-Class Brioche:
- 5 large eggs
- 3 cups unbleached bread flour
- 1 cup butter
- Follow instruction for Rich Man’s Brioche.

2- To make the sponge, stir ½ cup bread flour and yeast together in large mixing bowl. Stir in milk until all the flour is hydrated. Cover with plastic wrap and allow fermenting for 30 – 45 minutes or until sponge rises and then falls when bowl is tapped.

3- To make the dough, add eggs to the sponge and beat with paddle attachment (or whisk by hand) until smooth. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, sugar and salt. Add to the sponge and eggs and stir until all ingredients are hydrated and evenly distributed. Let mixture rest for 5 minutes.

4- On medium speed with dough hook, gradually work in the butter, about one-quarter at a time, waiting until each addition of butter assimilates before adding more.

5- Continue mixing on low until dough is well mixed and clears the sides of the bowl.

6- Lightly oil a bowl and transfer dough to bowl. Turn to coat and let ferment until dough doubles in size, approx. 90 minutes.

7- Shape the dough into desired container (three 8-½ x 4-½ loaf pans or miniature molds). Mist top with spray oil and loosely cover with plastic wrap. Proof dough again until it nearly fills the molds (approx. 1-½ to 2 hours).
Gently brush with egg wash. Continue proofing for another 15 – 30 minutes.

8- Preheat oven to 400-degrees for miniature brioches, 350-degrees for larger sizes, and place oven rack to the middle shelf.

9- Bake for about 15 – 20 minutes for miniature brioches and 35 – 50 for larger shapes. The bread should sound hollow when thumped on the bottom and be golden brown.

10- Remove brioches from pans as soon as they come out of the oven and cool for at least 20 minutes for small brioches and 1 hour for larger ones before serving.

Servings: Oh, so much.

Baked Cheddar Bubble Bread (aka, Chubble!)

I picked this food to make because it seemed like perfect Super Bowl food: hearty, unhealthy and cheesy. The blog I picked it up from labeled it as a man’s bread because it was chockabock full of cheese and herbs and bread. When I referenced that at the party, people did not seem to like that name as much. Sad. They also seemed disinclined to try it, so I was left with a surplus of bread.

To me, this tasted like sauceless pizza. It was tasty but kind of salty. I followed the recipe for the most part, except I used Parmesan I grated myself rather than canned, since it was what I had on hand. Also, I didn’t have any herbs on hand so I used all dried (I know, I’m terrible!)

I personally would make this again since I liked it a lot but maybe in a smaller batch next time. I thought muffin-sized was perfect - I split some between a pie plate and some between a muffin tin and I didn’t quite know what to do with the big hunk the pie plate gave to me. Individually-sized muffins were just right for our group atmosphere.

Also, next time, I would be very careful to make sure that my mix of cheese and herbs isn’t too “wet.” Because mine was, it made mixing kind of hard and I didn’t come out with the beautifully separate pieces that the original photos appeared to have.

The link to the recipe is here and, as always, some photos:

Final proofing - not much to look at, eh?

My last caption decided it wanted to be Canadian. Here is a yummy muffin for Valentine’s Day peeps.

Pizza Bread

What’s your favorite pizza? My personal favorite is pineapple and pepperoni. I like pepperoni more than ham because the pepperoni gives it a spicier kick. Sometimes, when I’m feeling daring, I even throw in mushrooms. I know, I live my life on the edge.

I decided that I should try to make pizza crust from scratch one day. I was a little worried, because I had no pizza stone and, more importantly, no pepperoni. But I boldly forged on.

It was easy enough to make, but I think that I rushed it. We had a deadline to get out of the house by 5:45 and the time was rapidly approaching. I quickly rolled it out and topped it with artichokes, mushrooms and pineapple before we all but inhaled the pizza. It was an odd but surprisingly tasty combination, in my opinion.

I think next time, I would try to work on my rolling skills as I was vaguely frustrated and my pizza dough came out into the shape of North Carolina -subliminal thinking, perhaps? I would also make sure to have enough mozzarella because there was too much sauce and not enough cheese, in my opinion.

Pizza Dough

1 tsp. dry active yeast
Pinch of sugar
⅔ cup warm water
2 cups unbleached AP flour
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tbsp. olive oil

1- Place yeast, sugar and warm water in a bowl. Set aside until bubbles form.

2- Add flour, salt and olive oil and knead to form smooth dough, approx. 10 minutes.

3- Place in clean, oiled bowl and turn to coat.

4- Allow to stand in warm place until it has doubled in size, approx. 20 minutes.

5- When ready, roll out to desired thickness on a sheet of non-stick baking paper dusted with flour.

Servings: 1

Pizza is tasty. So are cookies.

Rosemary Focaccia Bread

When I said I was serious about eating nothing about salad, I don’t think Martin quite got the hint. But oh. I was serious. Somewhat.

The first night home, I made ham sandwiches on warm rolls … and served it with a salad tossed with avocado cubes and tomatoes.

The second night, I did a twist on the same old and made shrimp avocado salad. Most recipes call for it to be served as is, but I put it over leafy greens. And I liked it that way. I’ll post that recipe later. For now, I’ll devote myself to my rosemary focaccia bread.

The recipe is the same as one previously used (from the Gourmet cookbook) but tasted so different. I like to think that this is due to the fact that I have now made yeasty things several times now and have since learned a thing or two. And here’s what I learned, put to good use:

The notes call for the dough to be fairly soupy but mine was extremely firm. So firm, I had my doubts and added a little bit of water after all the flour had been added.

That leads to my first mistake - the recipe makes it seem like all the flour should be added at once. After all the bread I’ve recently made, I should have known better. I did add only 3 cups at first, but noticed that it was rather gloppy and so dumped in the next 2 cups. Big mistake. Next time, I will add 4 cups and then add a tbsp. at a time until my desired consistency is reached.

I boldly forged ahead with my shaggy ball of dough and stuck it in a bowl and placed it in a corner to rise. Then I promptly forgot about it. Which I think was a good thing, as it gave the dough lots (and LOTS!) of time to rise. Then I again gave it plenty of time to rise after I’d stretched it out into the baking pan.

I’m quite pleased with the result. The bread was soft and light. The only downside is that I had to use dried rosemary, rather than fresh, and that I was a little sprinkle-happy with the salt. I think I could have cut back on that and been fine.

It was so soft and chewy last night and is still soft and somewhat chewy, though less so today. It held up fairly well, however, and I am pleased as punch with these results.

I have included the recipe again, as this time I made (minor) tweaks to it that I thought I should share.

Rosemary Focaccia Bread

1-2/3 cups warm water
1 pkt. active yeast
1 pinch sugar
5 cups unbleached AP flour
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tsp. salt

3 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. fresh chopped rosemary
1 tsp. salt

1- Heat water up and let cool to 105 - 115 degrees F. When water is around this temperature, combine sugar, 1 pkt. yeast and water in mixing bowl. Let sit for 5 minutes, until foamy.

2- Add olive oil and salt to yeast. With paddle attachment, beat in approximately 4 cups of flour. Switch to dough hook and mix on low until a ball of dough forms. If dough is too “wet” (not sticking well to the dough hook), add more flour 1 tbsp. at a time. If dough is too dry (not sticking to the bowl), add a little more water. Do not add more than 5 cups of flour total. Beat until dough ball is smooth and elastic.

3- Lightly grease large bowl. Place dough into bowl and turn to coat with oil. Place in warm, draft-free place and let rise for approximately 1 hour or until doubled in bulk, whichever happens last.

4- Turn out onto lightly greased baking sheet and stretch to fit sheet. Cover and let rise for approximately 1 hour or until doubled in bulk, whichever happens last.

5- Preheat oven to 425-degrees. Make shallow indentations on dough with fingers. Combine olive oil and rosemary together and brush over top of dough, letting it pool in the pockets.

6- When heated, place dough in and cook until crust is golden brown, approximately 20 - 25 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately invert onto cooling rack.

Servings: 8

The recipe did say olive oil should be a-poolin’ in the indentations. So this is what they meant, right?

Yummy, nice and golden.

And check out that crumb. Excellent!