If you follow us you will already know in our March Box we sent out a dinner party in a box. One of the items in that box was a Garden Art Focaccia Kit. If you have never made bread before it may have been intimidating. I'm here to tell you don't be. I had my husband make the bread as I documented it and I will tell you he doesn't cook and he doesn't bake. Grilling meat is as far as it goes in that department.
We start out with getting the yeast ready. Warm water, honey and the yeast all gets added in the mixing bowl. All you need to make sure of is that your water isn't hot or cold. Lukewarm water works best with yeast. Adding honey or sugar gives the yeast food to eat.
The next step is mixing the yeast with the water and honey. You want to see it start to get foamy. Once you see that you know your yeast is alive and will do it's job of making the bread rise. If you don't see anything happen your yeast is probably dead and you will need to start over with new yeast.
Now we are adding the flour. In this recipe we used bread flour which has a higher amount of protein than all purpose flour, which produces more gluten. Most breads will do best with this type of flour but if all purpose is all you have that is fine. We are letting the mixer do all the work for us which is super nice. This can also be done by hand if you don't have a stand mixer. My employee Rosie is supervising the whole job making sure everything is done correctly. She did great making sure it all went smoothly and may make employee of the month.
After adding all the flour and salt and remaining water the picture on the left is what our dough looked like. At this point it goes into an oiled bowl and covered. The dough should sit to rise for about 90 minutes or so. It should be doubled in size which is our dough on the right.
After your first rise, you want to add parchment paper to your baking sheet and oil it very well. Spread your dough on the sheet a bit and flip the dough over. Using your hands spread your dough into the sheet pan and let it sit to rise again for around 90 minutes.
Your dough should rise again in the pan. Once this is completed, use your fingers to create dimples in the dough being careful to not deflate all your air bubbles. Now on to the fun part!
Use your veggies to create a garden design on your bread. In our kit we provided dill, parsley, chives, scallions, yellow peppers, baby sweet peppers, and cherry tomatoes. You can use whatever suits your tastes. Red onion, mushrooms, asparagus are all great choices too. Use your creativity to make a delicious work of art! It only bakes for about 20 minutes.
This is what his looked like after baking. The more veggies you put on the more your design will stand out . The veggies on the top of the bread get nice and sweet and are just so delicious.
I hope this encourages you to try and make this bread. We had some of our subscribers show us their bread and they all turned out great! Give it a try and I think you will surprise yourself that yes you can make bread!
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