Hi friends!
I hope everyone is enjoying this limbo week between Christmas and New Year’s— a time where time doesn’t really exist. I think it’s Tuesday, but you could also tell me it’s already January, and I’d believe you. Or maybe it’s Monday, and this newsletter isn’t late yet. Yeah, let’s go with that.
While I feel like I’m living a real-life Groundhog Day, this weird week has also given me the chance to do all the things I don’t normally get to do in a regular week. And well, it’s been pretty fabulous. Sleeping in? I’ve done it every day. Leftover prime rib for lunch? No problem. Fountain soda every afternoon? You bet your ass.
My favorite thing I’ve done this week is bake bread. Focaccia to be specific. And for me, baking bread is a BFD (big fucking deal). Let me explain.
You see, I’ve always wanted to be great at baking bread. I’ve watched my mother do it for my entire life, and she always made it seem so seamless. She was never nervous to proof the yeast or over-knead the dough. She made it seem so simple— and it always turned out delicious.
Watching her all these years made me feel like my first attempt at making bread would go just as smoothly, but boy, was I wrong. The first time I baked bread, I failed. HARD.
To start, I made maybe the most finicky bread— sourdough— for this first attempt. Well, I tried to make it. After three days, I had no loaves to show for my hard work. Our maintenance man at the time even stopped by the apartment to see if the bread “was finally done.” Needless to say, I felt like such a failure, and I put baking bread into the imaginary box of things I’ll never try to make again.
Even as people started baking bread during the pandemic (you know, back in the early days when we all thought we’d walk out of this with new skills and hobbies lol), I kept to my stubbornness, refusing to try again.
But here we are, a few days out from a new year and a fresh start, and something made me want to give it another go. Maybe it was being in my mom’s presence— it’s way easier to try something new when you have someone around for advice. Maybe it was all this extra time I have on my hands. Maybe it was because my holiday diet has been 90% carbs, and I felt like I needed to double down. Whatever it was, I’m happy I decided to give baking bread another chance because the focaccia turned out to be one of the best things I’ve made in a very long time.
What I quickly learned was that focaccia is a much better beginner’s bread than sourdough (anyone who makes bread frequently is probably screaming DUH at me). The ingredients are about quality, not quantity. It’s simple to make, and there’s really not many areas where you can go wrong. I mean, sure, you have to do a second rise, which I advise you do overnight, but besides testing your patience, this recipe turned out to be the perfect one for re-entering the bread baking game. Oh, and the final product is addictive. I’ve had a piece of focaccia in my mouth since it came out of the oven. My fingers have been greased in olive oil for days. You get the picture.
There are countless focaccia recipes to choose from, but most stick to the same basics— again, proving this one is hard to mess up!
You can make Claire Saffitz’s focaccia recipe, which can be found in her new book, Dessert Person. She is the literal queen of all things baking, making even really complicated recipes easy to follow. If you want to go above and beyond, her book includes a few different flavor options for focaccia. Personally, I want to try her tomato, garlic and thyme rendition, but you can pick your own adventure.
There’s also icon Samin Nosrat’s recipe from SALT FAT ACID HEAT— another one of my favorite books. If you don’t have this book, buy this book. If you haven’t watched her make focaccia on her Netflix series, get watching. You can see her bake focaccia in the Fat episode.
If you’re a psycho and don’t want to watch the Netflix show, 1) we can’t be friends. 2) She also makes the recipe with the hilarious Brad Leone of It’s Alive. You can watch her make it there too.
And while Claire and Samin’s recipes look devine, the recipe I chose to make this week is Bon Appetit’s Classic Focaccia. It was perfect for re-starting my bread baking journey, and if I can do it, you sure as hell can.
Here’s what you’ll need:
6 ¼ cups bread flour (850 grams)
2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast (from one ¼ oz packet)
Pinch of sugar
1 tablespoon kosher salt
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided, plus more for greasing and drizzling
Flaky sea salt — use that Maldon Sea Salt we talked about last week
For this recipe, you’ll need a 18x13 rimmed baking sheet and a stand mixer with a dough hook.
Start by combining the bread flour and 2 ½ cups room-temperature water in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. Mix on low speed, scraping down the sides and hook as needed to incorporate any dry flour, until shaggy dough forms. Cover with a damp towel while you prepare the yeast.
Stir yeast, sugar and ½ cup warm water with a fork in a small bowl to dissolve. Let sit until yeast is foamy, about 5 minutes.
Pour the yeast mixture into the stand mixer, and mix on low speed until the dough absorbs all additional water, about 1 minutes. Add salt and continue to mix, increasing the speed to medium, until the dough is extremely elastic and very sticky. This will take about 5 minutes.
Pour 3 tablespoons olive oil into a large bowl and swirl to coat the sides. Because there’s so few ingredients in this recipe, try to use a good olive oil. The olive oil plays a huge part in adding flavor to the bread. We used a local olive oil from DiGregorio on The Hill.
Scrape the dough into the bowl with a large rubber spatula, and cover with plastic wrap. Place in a warm spot until the dough is doubled in volume, 2-3 hours.
Drizzle 2 tablespoons of olive oil into a 18x13 rimmed baking sheet, and using your hands, rub the oil all over the bottom and sides of the pan.
With your hands covered in oil, fold the dough inside the bowl a couple of times to deflate. In Claire’s recipe, she suggests folding the dough on top of itself, turning the bowl 90 degrees, and doing that again.
After folding the dough, move to the prepared baking sheet. Begin to stretch out to the corners of the pan. Your dough likely won’t reach the edges yet— that’s okay. When it’s stretched as much as it can, cover with a piece of well-oiled plastic wrap and let rest for 10 minutes to let the gluten relax.
After 10 minutes, uncover the pan and go back in with oiled hands, gently stretching the dough across the length and width of the baking sheet, working all the way to the edges of the corners. Cover again with the same piece of oiled plastic and let chill in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours and up to 24.
Tip: Make this dough the night before you plan to eat it. It’s way easier to let something chill overnight than anxiously wait for 8 hours to go by!
Remove sheet pan from refrigerator. Let the sheet pan sit in a warm spot until dough is puffed and bubbly, and nearly doubled in height, 45-65 minutes. Meanwhile, place a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat to 450 degrees.
Remove the plastic and drizzle dough generously with more oil. Oil hands again and press fingertips firmly into dough, pushing down all the way to the bottom of the pan to dimple all over. Sprinkle generously with flaky sea salt.
Bake focaccia until surface is deep golden brown all over, about 25-30 minutes. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes before moving to a wire rack. To do this, use a thin metal spatula to loosen the focaccia from the sheet pna. Let cool completely.
Use the focaccia to make the best damn sandwich. Dip it into soup. Eat it as a snack. Throw an egg on it. The possibilities are endless. You’re welcome.
For what’s giving me life this week, it’s been spending every second I can with family. My baby cousins have been making me smile and laugh all week long. Anytime I’ve let my mind wander into a place of sadness about how the holidays have been, well, different, they grab my attention and bring me back to reality, where I have so many things to be thankful for. Watching them open Christmas gifts made me feel like a kid again. There were so many Barbies, Legos, puzzles and games. Oh, and a bouncy suit and hoverboard. I don’t recommend trying those as an adult. You will get stuck, and you will get hurt.
It was eating french food at Brasserie by Niche and then going to the St. Louis Art Museum to see their current Storm of Progress exhibit. See, I can be civilized! It was receiving a beautiful illustration of my family from my cousin Jess. I completely lost it when I opened the gift. Everyone needs an ugly cry on Christmas, right?
And lastly, it was watching America’s Last Little Italy: The Hill documentary and then going to The Hill to shop at the Italian grocery store and eat Gioia’s hot salami sandwiches. We also got mascarpone and cherry gelato from Gelato Di Riso because you can’t go to The Hill and not get gelato. Thanks to this neighborhood and all the community members who make it thrive, I will be bringing around eight pounds of pasta back to Denver with me. New year, same Maddie.
Wish I was with you,
Maddie