A Fougasse

Fougasse stuffed with olives, sundried tomatoes and anchovies.

First I made the fougasse dough according to St. Raymond, that’s Raymond Blanc in case you live on another planet.

The dough starter needs to be prepared 12 hours in advance.

You shall require

Ingredients:

For the dough starter

5g fresh yeast

135ml cold water

100g strong white bread flour (in Germany 550)

100g rye flour

For the dough

680ml tap water

940g strong flour, plus extra for dusting

130g rye flour

15g fine salt

22g fresh yeast

Filling

5-6 pieces of soft sundried tomatoes chopped quite small

3-4 pitted black olives diced

6 anchovy filets, diced

For the topping

1 tsp. Rosemary chopped

Some sea salt crystals

Fresh ground black pepper from the mill            

I made my starter on Friday evening a good 12 hours before I needed it, whisk the yeast into the water, mix the two flours together and then add the yeast/water mixture and mix to form a thick paste cover and set aside to ferment.

Next day

Mix the water to the starter (I whisked it) it should become a dirty clay colour any one that has done any pottery will know when I say slip glaze consistency.

Place both flours into the food processor with a dough hook, add the salt to one side and crumble the yeast to the other side, add the starter dough mixture and set it going on low for 5 minutes until well mixed, you can now increase the speed, but as Linda’s processor only has 2 speeds, I left it on this speed a further 7 minutes, it had by this time formed into a silky smooth ball.

I removed to a baking dish and covered with cling film and allowed to prove for an hour.

 It will by this time have doubled in size.

As Raymond had said I cut it into 4 pieces,

It was at this point that I realised that I had far too much dough (this is what happens by following a recipe blindly, I should have read a bit further on when it says it is for four fougasse loaves, ah well Linda has now 500g of fougasse dough in the freezer)

I next put the oven onto maximum (250°C) and put 2 baking trays into the oven. I then rolled the dough out into a typical fougasse shape, here I made my variation I cut part of the way through the triangle from top to bottom. Like this:

On one half of the centre line I put half of the filling and flapped the other half over sealing the edges and enclosing the filling in an envelope. Roll out to the required shape, I now made the typical slashes through the dough, brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with rosemary, sea salt and fresh ground pepper. Repeated the same procedure with the other piece of dough, placed it also on baking paper. Cover and set aside to prove for 45 minutes.

I put the whole lot including the baking paper onto the hot baking trays, put a bowl of water in the bottom of the oven, do this all quickly so that the oven doesn’t cool down too much. I baked at maximum for 10 minutes and then swapped the position of the trays, which was the lower to the top and vice-versa, baking for another 7 minutes then check, this ensures that they both get the same degree of browning.
Tap the bottom of the loafs, when they sound hollow, they are then done, remove from the oven and place on a cooling grid.