Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Focaccia

There are some kitchen gadgets that seem to be just a big fat waste of counter space and money, but then there are others that I wouldn't do without. One of those is our bread machine. It really is super easy and useful. You just measure out the ingredients, select which type of bread and hit the start button. Three or four hours later you have fresh baked bread. Or, you can put the ingredients in the evening, set the time and in the morning you wake to the incredible aroma of baking bread. That will get anyone out of bed!
This weekend, I tried making focaccia for the first time. I've made numerous pizzas (someday I will show this in the blog) with the "dough setting" but never tried focaccia. With so many ripe cherry tomatoes to use up each day I thought I'd give it a whirl. I added fresh sage, rosemary and oregano to the basic focaccia recipe. When it was finished rising, I removed the dough from the machine and spread it out in two corn-meal dusted pans. After brushing lightly with olive oil I then dimpled the top with cherry tomatoes and scattered some sea salt on top. It baked up beautifully in the oven in about 25 minutes.
Voila. Lovely for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

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