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Thursday, May 19, 2011

Focaccia with garlic oil, rosemary and yellow tomatoes (Italian) (vegan)


This was one hell of a heavenly bread (yeah, I know, quite contradictory :P). What could be more delicious and yet humble than a home-made crispy Italian focaccia? We love serving home-made bread with soups and watery stews or curries, and this one went right along a hot bowl of Avgolemono (Greek chicken-lemon soup). I won't keep the story long and just skip to the instructions. Trust me, you want to get started as soon as possible.
The addition of yellow tomatoes is optional. To have the completely traditional version of the focaccia, leave those out. 
Adapted from Peter Reinhart, via The Purple Foodie. We made this for just 2 people and spread it more thinly because we want it crispy, but for the original size just double the quantities. Here it goes:




Ingredients (serves 2):
  • 50 ml olive oil
  • 5-6 garlic cloves
  • 250 g flour (plus a little extra for dusting/working)
  • 20 g yeast
  • 150 ml water
  • a pinch of salt
  • a sprig of rosemary
  • 3-4 yellow cherry tomatoes (130 g)


First of all the oil should be left to be infused with garlic flavor. This can be done be either leaving them together overnight or by heating the oil and pouring it over the cloves, leaving it for 20 minutes or so. We did both: heated the oil, poured over the chopped cloves and letting the whole thing overnight:

When you're ready to make the dough just dissolve the yeast in the water, put the flour in a food processor, add most of the oil (without the cloves), salt and the yeasted water:

Knead for a couple of minutes until the dough doesn't stick to the walls anymore, but just the bottom.

Cover and let it rest for one hour until it doubles in size. When it's done, preheat oven to 220 C. Flour a working surface, put the dough there and punch it down to its original size. Knead it for a couple more seconds or so:

 Then, put it in a large tray lined with baking paper and roll it out to your desired thinness.

Poke dents all over it with a fork (but don't push it all the way, you don't want to pierce it). Chop up the rosemary and sprinkle it on top:

Also drizzle the remaining garlic oil on top. Slice the tomatoes and add them too:

Put it the preheated oven:

And bake for 20 minutes. Take out, allow to cool and dig into the crunchy and flavorful goodness! :)

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