Focaccia & Bread
“There comes a point in your life when you need to stop eating other people's bread and make your own!” - Chris Geiger
What is it about a warm loaf of bread fresh out of the oven that is an almost universal shared experience? Bread is a staple food in most places, but good bread—no, great bread—is an experience in itself.
Over the last half a year, I have committed myself to learning how to bake. It started after feeling down and not really motivated to do much. I needed a little win. I had toyed with the idea of baking bread or cakes for a long time. Then one day, I just said, “I am making bread today.”
I looked up a nice, easy white bread recipe online, and by the end of the day, I had a loaf of bread. It wasn’t amazing or mind-blowing by any standards, but it was mine. I made it. It might as well have been the best loaf of bread ever created.
After this, I was off to the races with baking. I really tried to commit myself to understanding bread from top to bottom, but unlike a lot of the new hobbies I picked up, I took this one slowly. It would have been very easy to make a sourdough starter in my second week of baking, but instead, I made the same white bread recipe with active dry yeast for the first few weeks. Then I made some cinnamon rolls, then a pesto cheese pull, and then the bread I fell in love with making: focaccia.
I made two focaccias every week for the next few months, changing things slightly every time. I did eventually get to sourdough bread, but that is for another blog post.
My two baking loves are focaccia and seeded rye bread. They both offer different things, and I love them for different reasons. But today is all about focaccia!
It is a bread that takes many shapes.
I love it because I can make it as simple or complicated as I want, pick things out of the cupboards to add, or leave it simple with some rosemary and Maldon salt.
Eating focaccia or other types of bread is always fun and enjoyable, but I have found over the last few months that, really, my enjoyment has come from making it. During the process, I am taken somewhere else mentally. I am only focused on the dough and the process; nothing else matters.
Kneading the dough, mixing the water and flour—when I am doing this, everything else might as well not exist anymore. There is something special about dough, especially higher-hydration focaccia dough. The physicality required to knead it, the shape it takes, the gluten building up.
I have to respect the dough but, at the same time, make sure it understands who is in charge—that I am shaping it and not the other way around. This is a constant conversation and back-and-forth. Just when I think it understands, boom, we are back to it taking control.
