Friday 18 June 2010

Kamut Focaccia



I haven't really kept up with my food shopping lately....so a few days ago my section in the fridge....ok....if I'm honest I normally seem to take over the majority of the fridge (sorry Vinet!) anyhow, the section I tend to take over was nearing crisis mode...but  I found some tomatoes (ok, not in the fridge) and some mushrooms and the idea of making focaccia was born.
As I said I have a thing for Kamut at the moment. Kamut is related to durum wheat and it gives your baked goods a slightly more golden tone than normal wheat would. The flour smells like a hot day at the end of the summer when you're walking past bales of straw...minus the sunscreen smell.
So I decided to give it a go in a yeasty dough

Kamut Focaccia
300g Kamut flour
300g Strong bread flour
42g Fresh yeast
2tbsp Salt
1tbsp Olive oil
about 350ml water at room temperature...just see how it goes...

So basically what you want to do is put the flour and the salt into a bowl (yes, adding the salt right at the beginning is not good for the yeast but adding it later is such a mess...unless you have a nice and shiny kitchen aid it will be incredibly hard to get it to mix in properly).
Make a well in the flour and crumble the yeast into it. Add some water and stir into a smooth paste. It's ok if you mix in some of the flour but try not to mix in too much.
Give the yeast mixture 5 to 10 minutes and then mix it with the flour and add some more water (don't add all at a time....go for small increments....once you have to start adding flour to make a dough less sticky you're on a slippery slope...) and the olive oil.
Now it's time for your arms to get a workout :) get kneading and keep going for 10 minutes. If you haven an electric mixer it should take about 5 minutes on the slow speed.
Cover your bowl with a damp tea towel and leave the dough to rise until it's doubled in size (give it about 2 hours), knock it back and let it rise for another half an hour (a lot of recipes don't do the middle proof but I once read that this is what makes the dough nice and airy...could just be superstition but it really seems to work...)/
You'll want to preheat your oven to about 220 degrees about now.
Knock the dough back again and stretch/roll it out on a baking tray (unless you've got one of those uber-awesome trays that my mum has that nothing seems to stick to even though they're not non-stick, use some flour or baking parchment or one of those nifty silicone sheets) and yes, you might have guessed, leave it to rise again (last time, I promise!). Give it another 20 or 30 minutes.
In the meantime you chop up whatever veg you want to put on top, or if you're just using rosemary, sit back and relax or write a paragraph :)
Now you're gonna punch little wells into the dough (oh the childhood memories...this is just like playing with playdoh!!!)
Put the topping of your choice on...I was very fond of the mushroom, tomato, red onion and garlic combination I went for...
Bake it or 20 to 30 minutes and enjoy the smell of awesomeness wafting through your kitchen.

3 comments:

  1. And I thought it was a pizza yesterday! :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. dude there's waaaay toooo much oil on that thing for me to call it a pizza :)

    ReplyDelete

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