Golden Garlic Sourdough Focaccia | #BreadBakers

Baking a bread has always been a pleasurable experience for me. A very empowering one in fact. To me, dough holds immense possibilities and options. How beautifully it transforms into a loaf or a roll really fascinates me. If you have hungry little ones at home, a loaf of bread really comes as a savior. Having baked a number of loaves, rolls, boules, pull apart bread, braided bread, focaccia I feel the journey has just begun.

Sourdough baking has always fascinated and intrigued me.  How I admire the beautiful sourdough bread home bakers bake. Having decided to take a plunge, I made my own starter following the guidelines of kingarthurflour.com 

The starter was ready and the first sourdough bread was a Golden Focaccia also adapted from kingarthurflour with some changes. I added a lot of garlic and mixed herbs.

While the dough was rising, we heard the call of our pet squirrel in the mango tree. It was waiting for raisins we give her every day. It comes down and takes from our hands and then scurries to the top branch where it nibbles happily. 

This is a sight we love till it comes down again for many more rounds. 

On the higher branches, we noticed a beautiful butterfly. These are the pleasures of living in the countryside.

Our sourdough Focaccia turned out a beautiful golden and delicious. We loved it. Garlic did the magic. We loved our dinner with the crisp golden focaccia and soup.  

Golden Garlic Sourdough Focaccia

Ingredients

Starter

• 1 cup fed sourdough starter  Or, 
• ½ cup cool water
• 1 pinch instant dry yeast
• 1 cup all-purpose flour

Dough

• 1 cup starter
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 ¼ cup instant dry yeast
• ½ cup warm water (or more if needed)
• 1 ¼ teaspoon salt
• 2 +2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons minced garlic

Topping

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons mixed dry herbs
• Coarse sea salt
• Black pepper (coarsely ground)

Instructions

1. To make the starter, mix water, yeast, and flour and stir till you get a smooth lump-free paste. Cover and let rest on the kitchen counter for 14 hours. It will become bubbly.
2. To prepare the dough, take all the ingredients except oil for dough along with the fed starter or the overnight starter. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Mix well and knead for 5 – 8 minutes till you get a very smooth, soft elastic and shiny dough. Add more water if the dough feels hard or dry.
3. Transfer the dough to a greased bowl. Turn around once so that the dough is evenly coated with oil. Cover and keep for 1 hour or until double.
4. Grease one large baking tray (my tray measures 14.5 inches x 10.5 inches) with vegetable oil. Spread 2 tablespoon olive oil atop vegetable oil. Olive oil gives the bottom of focaccia a great crunch and colour. Transfer the dough to the baking tray. Now shape dough into a rectangle by pulling and stretching and patting. Leave some space around the perimeter. Make a thinner focaccia if you love it crisp and make thicker focaccia if you love it soft.
5. Cover the tray and allow the dough to rise for 30 minutes. Use your fingers to make dimples on focaccia by pressing down firmly.
6. Cover the tray and leave to rise for 1 hour or until very puffy. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat oven to oven to 200 degrees C.
7. Spray the focaccia heavily with warm water. Drizzle olive oil, sprinkle mixed herbs and salt.
8. Place the tray on the middle rack and bake for 20-25 minutes or until it turns a beautiful golden. Remove from the tray and cool on the rack.
9. Enjoy warm focaccia with soup or stew.

Linking to Bread Bakers-

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send Stacy an email with your blog URL to [email protected].

Our host this month is Karen who bakes awesome bread and blogs at karenskitchenstories. Her blog is a treasure house of amazing breads. Karen chose to bake sourdough bread this month.

Here is the list of the sourdough bread baked by our friends-

·  Buttery Sourdough Biscuits from Cook's Hideout

·  Cinnamon Raisin Sourdough Bread from Mayuri's Jikoni

·  Golden Sourdough Garlic Focaccia from Ambrosia

·  Hokkaido Bread with Tangzhong from Sonlicious

·  Overnight 500g Sourdough Bread from Hostess at Heart

·  Pai Bao with Tangzhong from All That's Left are the Crumbs

·  Pav Buns Using the Tangzhong Method from Spill the Spices

·  Peanut Bread from Passion Kneaded

·  Poolish Dough Pizza Crust from Palatable Passtime

·  Sourdough Bread Bowls from The Crumby Kitchen

·  Sourdough Focaccia with Crispy Garlic from Baking Sense

·  Sourdough Pain Noir from What Smells So Good?

·  Sourdough Whole Wheat Flatbreads from Sneha's Recipe

·  Walnut Levain Bread from Karen's Kitchen Stories

·  Whole Wheat Papo Secos - Portuguese Rolls from The Schizo Chef