Sourdough Focaccia
It’s been a while! I have been focusing more on my instagram account rather than posting on my blog. However, at the beginning of this year, I was accepted into the National University of Natural Medicine’s, Master of Science Nutrition program and I couldn’t be more excited! I am learning all things about food being able to heal us and how to cook with whole foods. I’m also learning how to get the most nutrients out of our food by either roasting certain foods (for example potatoes) instead of boiling, in order to maintain their vitamin C and not lose these wonderful vitamins to the water it is cooking in. Or preparing some foods in a cast iron skillet to help increase iron absorption. SO many fun facts! I’m obsessed.
Back to what brings me here today. One of my assignments in my culinary skills class, is to create a blog post about something we baked. I was like wait a second, I have one of those! I thought this is the perfect time to jump back into blogging and not just give Instagram all my energy. I have my professor to thank for that! Here we go!
I’ll be honest, baking has always intimidated me. I am usually the person who doesn’t read through a whole recipe first and just tosses everything in a bowl, mixes it together, then is bummed when things don’t turn out right. As my frustration grew, I knew I needed to do some self reflection. I needed patience. And I needed to actually read the directions. That helped ALOT. My mom has always been a great cook and baker, and she discovered the art of sourdough. She excelled at it! All of her breads were picture perfect, so I thought with her guidance I would like to give it a try. She gave me some sourdough starter, and I began my own journey with it. I’ve had a lot of failures and this dough has also taught me a lot of lessons. But the reward of having a beautiful, perfect loaf finally come out of the oven is magical. You can never underestimate the happiness of cutting the first slice of freshly baked sourdough and spreading butter on it. The butter melts into all the little nooks and crannies of the airy bread and it all just brings me pure joy! Truly nothing like it!
For this assignment I decided to make a focaccia. It comes out so fluffy and light and pairs perfectly with a salad or it’s amazing to eat just on its own. I have failed many attempts at this bread before, either the dough didn’t rise or I added way to much olive oil that the bread was literally swimming in it. But I think I’m getting more comfortable and learning from my mistakes. I found this recipe from the Feeling Foodish blog for Crispy and Fluffy Sourdough Focaccia. I had a few adjustments to her recipe but for the most part its the same. So lets get started!
Crispy and Fluffy Sourdough Focaccia
Ingredients:
125 grams freshly fed sourdough starter
375 grams water
10 grams sugar
500 grams bread flour or all purpose
15 grams olive oil (plus a 1/4 cup for later)
10 grams salt
Steps with pictures:
Ingredients and equipment needed for dough.
A kitchen scale is very important when working with sourdough, its very much a science!
Freshly fed starter from the night before.
Mix all ingredients into a bowl until it looks shaggy. I prefer to use my sourdough whisk so less gets stuck to me and more stays in the bowl.
Shaggy dough forms.
Cover bowl with a tea towel and let rest for one hour.
After resting, the dough spreads out a bit and begins to develop some air bubbles.
The next step is to go through a series of stretch and folds over the next 90 minutes. Every 30 minutes fold the dough then let rest for 30 minutes, for a total of 3 folds. This allows the active microbes in the starter to do their fermenting work and make a nice airy dough!
This is how you stretch and fold dough:
Get your hands wet so the dough doesn’t stick to you. Pull the dough up from one edge of the bowl and stretch it up then let it fold over itself. Turn the bowl 1/4 turn and repeat so all 4 sides have been stretched and folded. You may need to wet your hands multiple times during this process.
Once you have completed 3 stretch and folds you can now oil a 9 x 13 metal baking pan. Be generous with the oil here to ensure it will not stick to the pan, I’ve had this issue with glass pans in the past. Add the dough to the pan.
Then allow the dough to rest and rise for 3-4 hours. Dough prefers a warmer area of the house and with the temperatures in the 60’s here, it took my dough 4 hours to rise.
You’ve patiently waited for 4 hours to allow the sourdough starter to do its thing and now your ready to bake! Look at those air bubbles on top!
Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Get your hands wet once more and gently poke your fingers into the dough to create rivets. Then drizzle the 1/4 of olive oil over top. I added Trader Joe’s Aglio Olio seasoning over top, but you could add just salt or rosemary, freshly sliced tomatoes…anything really goes!
The focaccia has baked for 20 minutes in the oven at 450 degrees. The kitchen smells amazing and there are little pockets and air bubbles where the olive oil is being sucked up!
Now it’s important to have more patience and wait to cut this until it cools.
Ta-Da!!!
I couldn’t wait to slice this and try a piece! The edge and crust were crispy while the inside was light and fluffy!
Now for some background information on sourdough fermentation…
The art of sourdough has actually been around for a very long time. It is an ancient method of grain fermentation, used as early as 2000 B.C. by the ancient Egyptians. The presence of lactic acid bacteria and yeasts in our own diverse ecosystem induces lactic acid fermentation of sourdough which eventually becomes a stable culture after many hours. Interestingly, scientists have discovered that the number and type of microbiota in dough depends on the bakers home environment and their microbiome on their hands!
Eating sourdough does have health benefits due to the fermentation process. It provides gastrointestinal benefits by reducing gluten contents, has natural prebiotics and probiotics, diminishes the content of FODMAP's, has better blood glucose control, increases insulin sensitivity, reduces serum cholesterol, reduces risk of type 2 diabetes, decreases cardiovascular risk, and improves weight control. Pretty amazing stuff coming from simple ingredients!
Tips for your own sourdough starter: I feed my starter once a week to keep it alive. I use 50 grams of starter and 200 grams of water, 200 grams of flour to re-feed it. I find it fascinating how active it gets by watching how much it grows overnight! I also save the discard (leftover old starter), and can use that in other things like baking muffins, cookies, pasta, crackers, and even homemade dog biscuits to give them a pre or probiotic boost!
This bread may take most of the day to bake but the end results are so worth it! Hope you enjoy!
Resources:
https://feelingfoodish.com/crisp-and-fluffy-sourdough-focaccia/
