Focaccia

Focaccia

I’m not feeling well for many days, so I miss my oven very much. But I’m just recovering so I don’t want to make anything so complicated. By flipping through the book I find this one quite easy to do. The recipe is coming from ............(I talk about it before). The original recipe makes 4 pieces but today I make a big one instead, you can follow this instruction for 4 pieces or bake the big one like me but the time will be about 20-25 minutes.

Focaccia

Makes 4 Focaccia

200 g	Bread flour
3 g	Instant yeast
4 g	Sugar
4 g	Salt
10 ml	Olive oil
150 ml	Water
	Olive oil for brushing
	Pitted dark olive
	Thyme

Put flour, yeast, sugar and salt together in a bowl, whisk to combine. Form a well in the center; pour in the water and olive oil.

Begin to mix with hand until the dough comes together. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead for about 5 minutes (or 100 time), until smooth and no longer sticky.

Place dough in oiled bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and put in a warm place free of drafts for 1 to 1 ½ hours. Dough should be doubled in bulk.

Take the dough out of the bowl and knead for a few minutes then divide into 4 pieces and roll the dough into balls and let the dough rest for 10-15 minutes. Roll balls into circles on a lightly floured surface with floured rolling pin.

The circles should be about 5-inch in diameter.

Preheat oven to 220°C.

Let the dough rise for about 30 minutes in a warm place.

(I make a big one)

About 10 minutes before baking, press fingertips all over dough, forming indentations, and drizzle olive oil over dough. Sprinkle olives and chopped Thyme evenly over the dough.

Place dough on oiled baking sheets and bake about 15 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool.

From: パン作り12か月―手軽に焼ける本格パンとクイックブレッド

Little Palmiers

Palmiers: French name means palm trees because the cookies resemble the leaves of a palm. This is the description that Bo writes in the recipe; sometimes I call them butterfly (which sounds lovelier). This is the cookie that I really want to make for a long time, but using the purchased puff pastry is not challenging enough, so it takes me a lot of time to practice the puff pastry making before start making it. But if you don’t want to make your own puff pastry, you can use the purchased one, because you will bake the cookie in batch, so making it a lot or less doesn’t seem to be any problem.

Even he mentions that I should not leave out the sugar in the dough but the taste is so sweet that I can’t enjoy it as much as I want. But if you don’t mind the sweet taste, Bo said that “The granulated sugar not only takes the place of flour to prevent the dough from sticking, but also makes the Palm Leaves crisp, shiny, and sweet, as the sugar caramelizes while the cookies are baking. You may not use up all of the sugar in the recipe, but the more sugar you can roll into the puff pastry, the better. Should you fail to roll enough sugar into the dough, the cookies will not only be less sweet, they will spread out too far and lose their special shape.” I wonder if my cookies will be bad the first time I leave out the sugar but it’s still ok (the credit goes to his puff pastry recipe that is so good, the palmier comes out great, they puff and crisp). So, use sugar or not I think it depends on your desire.

Ps. I include the sugar in the recipe, so if you don’t use it in rolling just follow the way to fold the puff pastry.

Little Palmiers

Make about 90 pieces

Half the recipe of All-Butter Puff Pastry

8 ounces (225 g) granulated sugar (or just enough to roll the palmiers)

1. Roll out the puff pastry in the granulated sugar to make a rectangle measuring 24 x 12 inches (60 x 30 cm) and about ⅛ inch (3 mm) thick. If the dough is uneven or too large on any side, trim it to the proper dimensions. Keep turning and moving the dough as you roll it out, spreading the sugar evenly underneath and on top of the puff pastry at the same time to keep the dough from sticking to the table.

2. Place the dough in front of you horizontally. Fold the long sides of the rectangle in to meet in the center. Fold the dough again as if you close the book, cover with plastic and put it the refrigerator until firm.

3. Preheat the oven to 219 °C.

Cut the folded strip into slices 1/8 inch (3 mm) thick, (and cover with sugar if you don’t use the sugar when rolling the dough, like me). Place the slices, cut-side up, on sheet pans lined with baking paper or Silpats. Keep in mind as you place them on the pans that they will spread to about 3 times as wide while baking.

4. Bake until the sugar starts to caramelize and turn golden on the bottoms, about 8 minutes.

5. Remove the pan from the oven and quickly turn each cookie over on the pan, using a spatula or metal scraper. Let the cookies cool.

White Chocolate and Macadamia Cookies

This is very easy to make and too eat, I have many recipes for making this kind of cookie but some of the too rich to enjoy (one of my recipe is very delicious but I can’t take more than one piece at a time). The cookie is good, not too rich and easy to enjoy. I add salt into the recipe because macadamia is more delicious with salt.

White Chocolate and Macadamia Cookies

Makes about 12

125g	butter, softened
85 g	soft light brown sugar
1 teaspoon	vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon	salt
1	large egg yolk
150 g	Plain flour
75 g	White chocolate chopped
50 g	macadamia nuts

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/gas 4.

Beat together the butter and sugar until it is pale and creamy, either in an electric mixer or, if you are feeling energetic, by hand. Beat in the vanilla extract and egg yolk. Add the flour, white chocolate chunks and chopped nuts. Mix until you have a smooth dough, with the only lumps being the chocolate and nuts.

Using your hands, roll the dough into golf-sized balls and lightly press each one flat on to a greased baking sheet, making sure they are spread slightly apart.

Bake for 12 minutes until golden. Remove from the oven and let cool for a couple of minutes before either eating or cooling completely on a wire rack.