Apart from pizza dough, I've never made bread before, but since I decided I wanted to cook more, I knew bread making was something I definitely wanted to try. Focaccia, an Italian bread made with olive oil, seemed exactly like the sort of bread I'd enjoy both making and eating. We used Paul Hollywood's recipe in
How To Bake. It isn't too challenging, but with waiting for the bread to rise and prove, it takes over three hours of preparation, though it doesn't feel like that long. It's definitely worth it though!
It started off very similar to the pizza dough recipe, but with different amounts of the ingredients.
Kneading the bread
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| Once the bread had risen |
Dividing the dough into two loaves
Before and after proving for an hour
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| Before cooking |
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| After cooking |
We had hummous, vegan cheese and olives with feta with one of the loaves of focaccia as a starter. The vegan cheese went especially well with it, and (admittedly between seven of us) the whole lot disappeared within minutes.
