Leaf Shaped Fougasse

Many things could have gone horribly wrong with this recipe.


For instance I might not have stood beside my mixer for the 10 minutes it stirred around the dough. If I hadn't been standing there it probably would have vibrated onto the ground, killing my dog. You're welcome Cooper.



One hour, doubled, check.

This is where I should have read the recipe a little more carefully.


Oh, what's that? I should have used 3 bags? Then they wouldn't end up looking like this 24 hours later:

All night I thought I was going to hear an explosion from the fridge.

It was at this point that I got a little pissy. You see, I had everything listed in the ingredients. Then you read the recipe and it says something about corn meal dusted baking sheet. Where is the corn meal in the ingredients, huh? Also, I need a water bottle to spray the oven, maybe there should be an equipment list... if something is required it should be listed without me having to read the whole damn thing.


I kind of feel like I'm doing it wrong at this point. It doesn't look as smooth as the pictures in the book. OOoooohhhh, I skipped the part where I let it sit out for an hour and a half. Which I really didn't realize until just know while blogging. Damn, how did this bread actually turn out?


I'm not sure how I was supposed to fit three of these on two baking pans. So I didn't.


Something tells me the one on the right is going to turn out a little better. Without the pictures in the book I never would have been able to tell what the hell Julia was trying to tell me to do with the dough. I barely understood with the pictures for God's sake. Also what does "spray the oven with water" mean exactly? Am I supposed to be spraying over the baking, or straight into the bottom. I did both just in case.


I probably should have pulled those holes just a little bit bigger. Pretty much tastes the way it looks. Like bread.


Leaf Shaped Fougasse
Adapted from Baking With Julia

Makes 2 large or 3 medium breads

1 recipe Focaccia dough, chilled for at least 24 hours
Olive oil, for brushing
Fresh herbs or dried herbes de Provence, for topping
Coarse sea salt, for sprinkling

Focaccia Recipe
2 1/4 -2 1/2 cups tepid water
2 T active dry yeast
1/4 c olive oil
6 1/2 c unbleached all-purpose flour
4 t salt

Mixing the dough: Whisk 1/2 c of the water and the yeast together in the bowl of a mixer. Set the mixture aside for 5 minutes, until the yeast dissolves and turns creamy.
Meanwhile, pour 1 3/4 c warm water into a large measuring cup, add the olive oil, and whisk to blend; set aside. Whisk the flour and salt together in a large bowl and set this aside as well.
Pour the water-oil mixture over the yeast and stir with the whisk to blend. Add about half of the flour and stir with a rubber spatula just to mix. Attach the dough hook, add the remaining flour, and mix on low speed for about 3 minutes or until the dough just starts to come together. If the dough appear dry and a little stiff, add a few drops of warm water, scraping the bowl and hook if necessary to incorporate the water and create a soft dough. Increase the mixer speed to medium-high and continue to mix for about 10 minutes, scraping down the hook and sides of the bowl as needed until you have a soft, slightly moist, extremely elastic dough that cleans the sides of the bowl. You will know that the dough is properly mixed when a piece can be stretched, without tearing, to create a "window", an almost transparent patch of dough.

First Rise: Transfer the dough to a work surface and form it into a ball. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, turn it around to cover it with oil, and cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap. Allow the dough to rise at room temperature until doubled in bulk, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Second Rise: Fold the dough down on itself to deflate it and let it rise again until doubled and billowy, 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Shaping and Resting: Fold the dough over on itself again to deflate it (as you do this, you can hear the bubbles squeak and pop) and turn it out onto a work surface. Using a metal dough scraper or a knife, cut the dough into 3 equal pieces. Shape each piece into a ball.
Place each ball in an oiled gallon-sized lock-top plastic bag and refrigerate 24 - 36 hours.
About 1 1/2 hours before you plan to bake, remove the dough from the refrigerator and gently take the balls out of the oiled bags. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface, dust the tops of the balls with flour and cover loosely but complete with plastic (to avoid having the tops go crusty). Let rest for 1 hour, until the dough reaches a cool room temperature and feels spongy when prodded.

Position the oven racks to divide the oven into 3rds and preheat the oven to 450 F. Line two baking sheets with parchment and dust the paper with cornmeal; keep the sheets close at hand. Fill a spray bottle with water and set it aside.

Shaping the Dough: Working with one piece of dough at a time (keeping the others covered), and working with the dough as you do with all focaccias - that is, gently, taking care not to knock out all the air you've worked into it - put the dough over your left fist (your right if you are left handed) and lift and circle it around your fist with your other hand. Pull it little and pinch the edges slightly as you work your way around - you're aiming for a teardrop or triangular shape about a foot long and 10 inches across at the base. Put the dough on the cornmeal-dusted baking sheet and cover it while you work the other pieces into shape.

Use a single-edge razor or a sharp serrated knife, held perpendicular to the dough, to create the leaf pattern in the dough: Position the teardrop with the broad base parallel to you and cut 3 vertical slashes in a line down the center of the teardrop, plunging the razor straight down into the dough. With these as your guide, cut 3 slanted cuts in both halves of the teardrop, angling the cuts between the slashes that clip the long sides. Nick the sloping sides, cutting at an angle and cutting only about half the length of the razor blade into the dough. Starting with the diagonal slashes on either side of the vertical cuts, work your fingers into all of the openings and stretch them evenly to double or triple their original size. (they must be opened now so that the holes won't close when the dough rises.)

Rest: Brush the loaves with olive oil, sprinkle with herbs, and dust with coarse salt. Let rest for about 10 minutes before baking.

Baking the Bread: Bake the fougasse for 15 to 18 minutes, or until they are golden and speckled with small surface bubbles, spraying the oven with water 3 times during the first 8 minutes of baking. If the breads aren't browning evenly, rotate the pans, top to bottom and front to back, halfway through the baking period. As soon as you remove the fougasse from the oven, brush them with a little more olive oil, and transfer them to a rack to cool before serving.

Storing: The fougasse are best the day they are backed, but once cooled, they can be wrapped airtight and frozen for up to 2 weeks. Thaw the breads, still wrapped, at room temperature and warm them in a 350 F oven before serving.

Ka'kat

I've never heard of ka'kat before this week's Baking Beauties assignment. Unlike some folks thought, this was not something a cat coughed up. According to Julia this is an Eastern Mediterranean street food, much like a soft pretzel.

There's something lovely about this packaging:


I think it's the word "traditional" on there... twice.

Have I mentioned how much I love my prep bowls? It means that I don't have piles of crap laying on every surface while I try to find my measuring spoons for the 756th time.


Julia is nothing if not specific in her directions. My favourite? "Stirring in one direction with a wooden spoon, add 2 to 3 cups of flour, a cup at a time, mixing until incorporated."

She seriously just told me what kind of spoon to use and to only go in one direction. For about 100 strokes. I like that because then if I fuck up, I blame Julia Child personally for not telling me that it should have been 110 strokes.


After all that stirring, we had the first rise. Which I got to punch. Awesome.


Now comes the part where I have to cut it into 32, that's right THIRTY TWO, pieces. Roll out each piece into a rope 6 - 7 inches long and make a circle:


That dough scraper thingy is coming in handy. Not only does it scrape dough (which is excellent all by itself), it is exactly six inches long.

There were two baking sheets that looked like this:


There was a brief second rise and then all this glorious Ka'kat goodness



I liked them, but they weren't totally fantastic. I basically ate them like a dinner roll. I didn't add the mahleb as it said it was optional and I had no idea what it was. Perhaps that would have elevated from tiny bagel like thing to something incredibly popular on the streets of Lebanon.


Tina's posted the recipe here.

Cantuccini

Yeah, I'm a week late with this post and didn't make the Fruit Focaccia this week. I'm the worst Baking Beauty, but whatever.


Mostly I found this recipe a little boring. I've never made biscotti before, so it was new to me. It just wasn't all that challenging.

This was the worst part. Julia says the dough is going to be a little dry, but this was like the freaking Sahara dessert or something:


This is me measuring out my 12 inch log before I realized it was supposed to be 2 logs.

And, well then there was biscotti, sorry cantuccini


I dipped some haphazardly in chocolate. The chocolate ones have not survived.


They tasted like biscotti - which I'm not terribly fond of, but they were alright.

Also, I made a strawberry rhubarb pie with some of my leftover pastry dough crust.

French Apple Tart

I made this yesterday, I promise. I just got sleepy and went to bed before posting. Maybe that has something to do with this taking FIVE HOURS to complete.

First I heeded Kristina's advice to make half the pie crust dough recipe. The actual Tart recipe says to make a quarter of the recipe, but I can't do that kind of math. If you want to know what 6 minutes and 30 seconds minus 2 minutes and 45 seconds is I'm your gal. If you want to know what a quarter of 5 1/4 cups is I can't help you.

Trouble is, I got distracted watching my mixer to see what the constitency of the dough was... Then I read "ice cold water" and panicked because I needed to pour it in and it was not ice cold. So I start running the water and dump it in. Then I read "just mix until combined" and I thought, "geez, that's going to take forever... why is this so wet?" Ah crap, I forgot to halve the water amount.


So I started again, and at the point of adding the water I just threw in the sopping wet dough.
I froze the other 3/4 of the recipe. I guess I need to make three pies this month.

Problem #2 - apparently the only difference between a pie and tart is sloping edge vs. straight edge of the crust. I made a pie.

Problem #3 - that's a lot of apples to peel. Whoever made my peeler didn't take into account that metal piece stabbing into my thumb while I peeled 8 apples.


Problem #4 - I really should have taken heed when they said "large bowl". Basically I should always use a bowl one size larger than I think. If only to help with my clean up later.

I don't think this is what Julia had in mind when she said to use a potato masher to mash up the baked apples, but this is my potato masher:

I thought I'd bake the apples while the pie chilled, but then didn't realize the crust was supposed to bake at 400 degrees, while the apples were 375. So after baking my crust looked like this:


Not exactly flaky and golden brown. So I threw it back in for about 15 minutes.


Mandolin sliced up apples (thanks Jackie!):


Mashed apple filled crust:
Putting the slices on the tart/pie:

Craig likes the look of this:


And, five hours later (with Craig's urging of peace in the background) she's DONE:


Just missing a small part of the crust that fell into the oven:

Ginger Snaps

Tonight's going to be busy over here at Not Julia.

First up - last week's Baking Beauties assignment was Ginger Snaps, which I did last Sunday but totally forgot to post.

I have no fond childhood memories of ginger snap cookies. Mostly it just reminds me of this movie
Turns out I might not have had these because my mother hates them. I mentioned the project and she said that she had them constantly as I child and didn't like them.


Have I mentioned that I hate mollasses? I hate it. It's just sticky. And annoying. And it doesn't even taste all that good. So I end up using tonnes of flour to stop it from sticking to everything. Including, apparently, the dog:



In the end I wasn't overly impressed. They were alright, we ate 'em.
They were "snappy" at first but then I stored them in the fridge and they became just thin chewy ginger cookies.

Vanilla Chiffon Roll

Tina wasn't kidding when she said people would be scared off by this recipe. It sounded soooooooo complicated. How many times can you invert a pan? I mean, really? But I likely won't have time to participate the next two weeks, and I don't want to be the first person ever kicked out of the Baking Beauties! To help me in what seemed like an impossible task I borrowed my mom's Kitchen Aid Mixer. And thank Julia I did, because I don't think I could have completed this cake without it. The directions were rather intimidating. Craig had to go out at 9:00PM on a Wednesday night to get me another baking sheet that was as big as the one I was using. So as to properly invert the cake. I'm a little short on pictures this time, because I was concentrating too hard on what the hell Julia was telling me to do. I actually had to ask Craig to read part of it to me, which he did while miming it, in order for me to understand.




The rolling of the cake was the most stressful part. And in the end, I don't think I did it right, because I don't this is what Julia had in mind:


It may be the ugliest cake ever made. But damn, it tasted good!

Also, on an unrelated note, I'd like to congratulate myself for completing this challenge the same week as my rehearsal dinner and birth of my new niece.



Oh, Hi... I'm Molly Sharon McPhedran and I have big feet. I like long walks on the beach and crying.