Farid and Foccacia

I have a habit of buying bread at 4pm. This is not so wise since the bread was probably made 12 hrs ago and won’t be as fresh as buying it in the morning. But since my job requires me to be at work before 8 a.m., I rarely get to the local bakery before work.

In an effort to stop buying shitty bread and also buy locally, my partner suggested making our own bread. And since I know little about making different breads, I headed into work at the usual time on my day off to kick it with our restaurant’s artisan bread maker (who heads into work at 6 a.m.).

For the greater good I headed to work and met Farid. Farid stands about 5’9, has “just got back from the beach” skin, black/graying hair, and a mole on his left cheek. Farid was born in France and worked for a bakery while pursuing his accounting degree. Luckily for us, he stayed with his day job and followed his path into bread making to Paris. Eventually, he would move to the Unites States where he would perfect his skills in the kitchens of many well-respected chefs in the nation’s capital.

Farid is warm and welcoming when I arrive on a cloudy Monday morning. He had one mission for me to fulfill and that was focaccia. Focaccia is a rather simple bread but time consuming, as it relies on lots of waiting around.

Foccacia is a flat bread and often topped with herbs and or vegetables. Its name comes from the Latin focus meaning “centre” and “fireplace”, where most breads were originally cooked. The origin of the bread is believed to have come from the Etruscans or ancient Greeks but currently is a delicacy of the Lugarian cuisine.

My first task was to measure out the dough ingredients: flour, yeast, salt, and olive oil. For this one we weren’t placing any vegetables or herbs on it…going “au natural”. The next task was mixing the “biga”, pronounced "bee-ga". This is the secret weapon. The biga is prefermented dough that gets added into the dough I just measured out. The biga is a combination of flour, a small amount of yeast, and salt. It sits over night (preferments) and then gets added into the mix with the dough. Then that dough is placed on a sheet tray with olive oil on the bottom and top and gets patted down with my hands. This is the other “secret” of focaccia making. Apparently it is a better technique to flatten than to pound it with your fists. After that is done you wait 15 minutes and do it again and then one more. The more you flatten and wait and flatten, the better the texture of the bread. I was then advised by Farid to place the dough (which he packed up for me, along with about 24 ounces of yeast) in a warm area since no home cooks are likely to have proofers in their homes. The bread should sit for at least 7hrs or over night. He swears by overnight.

I’ll be baking it at 400 degrees for 20 minutes tomorrow evening for dinner. And I can’t wait.

The recipe we used was:

1-to make the biga: 18 oz total
flour
small amt yeast, pinch, salt
sits over night, (90min to rise, in warm place and plastic wrap the container always)

2-to make the added dough:
3 lbs= use sheet tray
1.8 oz salt
½ cup olive oil
1 oz. yeast

Home cooks are advised not to make any bread over one pound, as it will be hard to mix. But if you have a commercial mixer at home that can mix 4,904,903 pounds of dough….GO FOR IT!