Friday, December 28, 2007

Leftover Sourdough Focaccia

Yesterday was feeding day for my sourdough starter. As usual I hate to throw away perfectly lively babies so I used it to make a focaccia. I didn't really follow a recipe and certainly didn't measure anything. But it turned out pretty good anyway. I took almost a cup of sourdough starter and added about a cup of water to it. To that I added a tsp of salt and about two cups of all purpose flour. This was mixed up well, covered with plastic wrap and allowed to sit for a couple hours. After that I kneaded the wet dough in the bowl by folding it over on itself about 15-20 times. This was allowed to rise for another 3 hours. The very wet dough was poured out onto a sheet pan lined with parchment. I had doused the parchment paper with a liberal tbsp or more of good olive oil. I stretched the dough out thin with oiled fingers. It was a very nice texture - very pliable and relaxed. It stretched beautifully. I splashed the top with more olive oil to liberally coat it and then sprinkled it with coarse salt and a blend of dried basil, oregano and rosemary. This was covered with plastic wrap and allowed to rest for about an hour. I popped it into a 450F oven for about 15 minutes until the top just started to show hints of brown. The bread turned out better than I expected. The texture was nice and chewy and the oil made it slightly crispy. My first try at focaccia and it turned out pretty good.

1 comment:

test it comm said...

A sourdough based focaccia does sound good.