Recipe #5 - Herb-Rosemary Focaccia Loaves

When I married my husband, I didn't realize that I was marrying the son of the Goddess of Bread.  My mother in law doesn't just make delicious bread, she teaches people how to make bread.  They pay to attend her classes and eat her food.  The problem?  You see, I had never made a loaf of bread that required yeast until after I was married.  Banana bread?  No problem.  Zucchini bread?  Check.  Yeast?  Scary!

Luckily, I learned.  She shared her recipes and her knowledge, and after baking a lot of bricks, I finally figured things out.  That's not to say that my bread is as yummy as hers, but when needed, I can make it.

Today's recipe is focaccia bread.  It is on page 36 in the cookbook or on the blog here.

It is really a pretty basic recipe -- not a lot of ingredients or skill required.  Mix the dough:

Let it rise 45 minutes to an hour.  Mine was an hour.

Then you divide the dough into two loaves and let it rise another 45 minutes.  Once the second rising has finished (that sounds like a vampire movie - The Second Rising), you brush the loaves with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and rosemary.  Apparently I underestimated how much rosemary I had.  You need 2 T for this recipe and I had the perfect amount for the 1 1/2 T needed for the dough.  So I had to improvise a bit.

A little while back, the Goddess of Bread gave me these two cool dipping bowls and some seasoning made especially for dipping bread.

One of the seasonings is a Rosemary and Garlic mix.  Perfect!  So I sprinkled a little of that on top.  And I, of course, mixed up my olive oil and seasonings to let my dipping oil "mature" in taste.

Now I should have taken a picture of the bread before I put the olive oil on it, because it sort of took the "puff" out of the rise when I did it.  These look a little flat...

Since I put both loaves on the same cookie sheet, they grew together after rising.  (I thought they looked like a butt.  My sweet innocent daughter thought they looked like Mickey Mouse ears.  Oh to be 5 again!)  In rereading the recipe, I'm not sure if they were intended for different cookie sheets or to go together.  It reads "Shape each half into a rounded loaf and place on a greased cookie sheet."

So if you're making these to give away, you might consider two cookie sheets.  If your family is just going to inhale them, like mine did, who cares if they form a butt/Mickey ears.

And the final product? 

It was a delicious hit.  Loved by all, including me.  I would have taken a picture of my kids eating this with their dinner, but between Molly turning her noodles into a fu manchu mustache and then a nose ring (like a bull) followed by some mooing, I forgot.  Besides, by dinnertime, my kids looked like orphans.

Now as much as I like this recipe, I have one from the Goddess of Bread that I think I like better, but it does make two large loaves.  Perhaps this one will be my standby when I need enough for one meal.