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Fougasse with Rosemary and Thyme

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This flavour packed bread with characteristic slashes, is easy to make resulting in a delicious bread perfect for tearing and sharing.  This recipe sees the dough flavoured with fresh herbs of rosemary and thyme. 

 

Homemade fougasse bread with rosemary and thyme

Bless Mr E, my husband, he sits alongside me every Wednesday evening watching the baking antics in the Great British Bake Off tent.  Although he doesn’t watch it quite as intently as I do, he will still pass the occassional comment about something being a great bake and who he thinks deserves to be awarded star baker or even who he thinks is ready to go home.

Homemade fougasse bread with rosemary and thyme

Following each and every episode I will ask him what bake he thinks I should tackle for my Great Bloggers Bake Along attempt.  Invariably we both come to the same decision about what bake, or even bakes, the Only Crumbs Remain kitchen should whip up.  This week was different though.  The signature challenge of citrus meringue pie, which sang like an angel to me, didn’t appeal to Mr E due to his dislike of meringue. (I know!  How can this be!)  His taste buds lay with us trying Paul’s herby fougasse.  So some baking multi-tasking was required this week to accomodate both of our likes.  A herby fougasse dough with rosemary and thyme was set aside to proove whilst I whipped up the thyme pastry for our (or rather my) Lemon Meringue Pie.

Homemade fougasse bread with rosemary and thyme

Now, our Fougasse with Rosemary and Thyme doesn’t actually refer to the crime drama series staring Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris (lol), but rather the fresh herbs which work so well together in this delicious bread.  The recipe itself comes from this year’s GBBO recipe book, At Home, and lists rosemary, thyme and sage as the principal flavours.  Not being a big fan of sage in the Only Crumbs Remain kitchen our fougasse bread was made with just the two herbs, rosemary and thyme.  The other alteration made to Paul Holywood’s Fougasse recipe was to reduce the quantity.  His recipe created a dough which was sufficient to make two fougasse breads, but being only a small household we clearly had no need for such an amount, especially as the original recipe suggested the bread is ‘best served warm, as soon as possible.’

Homemade fougasse bread with rosemary and thyme

It’s been a number of months since I last made a ‘proper’ bread which required kneading.  Due to a wrist problem, which limits the amount of pressure I can put through the joint without pain, we have been relying on no-knead bread and no-knead rosemary and garlic focaccia as well as shop bought loaves.  Happily, because the fougasse dough is quite loose and soft it’s easy to work, and although that can mean the dough tends to be a little messy during the kneading process, the flour gradually absorbs more water making it less sticky and naturally ‘cleans’ your hands.  Of course it’s even easier to make in a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment!

 

So, let’s get to it and bake!

 

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Fougasse with Rosemary & Thyme
by Only Crumbs Remain     October-3-2016
This
flavour packed bread with characteristic slashes, is easy to make
resulting in a delicious bread perfect for tearing and sharing.  This
recipe sees the dough flavoured with fresh herbs of rosemary and thyme. 

 

Details

Hands on time: 20 – 25 mins Cook time: 15 – 20 mins       Yield: 1 Fougasse
Specific Equipment
Plastic Container (2L volume)
Flat Baking Tray

Ingredients
  • 250g Strong White Bread Flour + extra for dusting
  • 5g Fine Sea Salt
  • 5g Fast Action Dried Yeast
  • 1 tbsp Olive Oil + extra for drizzling
  • 175g Warm Water
  • 1 tsp Fresh Rosemary, finely chopped + few extra full leaves to finish
  • 1 tsp Fresh Thyme Leaves, finely chopped
  • Fine Semolina for dusting
Method
1. Make the dough. Place the flour, salt and yeast into a good sized bowl. Avoid letting the yeast touch the salt at this stage. Combine with your hands. Make a well in the flour. Add the olive oil and three quarters of the water. With your hand mix the flour into the liquid aiming to make a dough. Gradually add the remaining water and mix with your hands until it is all incorporated. The dough will be quite soft. Drizzle a little olive oil onto your work surface. Place the dough onto the work surface. Knead the dough for about 8 minutes. Work in the herbs. Knead for a further two minutes until it is smooth, soft and very stretchy.2. Proove the dough. Oil a square plastic container with more olive oil. Place the dough into the container and afix the lid or cover with clingfilm. Set aside at room temperature for about an hour until it has doubled in size. 3. Prepare to shape the fougasse dough. Line a flat baking sheet with grease proof paper, tacking it down with margarine / butter at the corners.   In a small bowl mix together a dessert spoon each of bread flour and fine semolina.  Liberally scatter this over the greaseproof paper. 4. Shape the dough. Carefully tip the dough onto the prepared baking sheet.  It will be quite a soft loose dough.  Use your fingers to gently spread it out into an oval shape, allowing it to use most of the space on the baking sheet. Use a pizza wheel to cut the bread.  Firstly make two vertical cuts through the centre of the dough.  Avoid cutting to the very edge of the dough.  Next make five or six cuts down both the left and right hand side of the dough.  Again avoid cutting to the very edge of the dough.  Use your fingers to open out the cuts.  The dough will still feel a bit sticky, so you may find it helpful to coat your fingers in flour when opening up the cuts.5. Proove for a second time. Place the baking tray and dough into a large plastic bag. Trap air into the bag to inflate it, preventing the bag from touching the dough. Set aside for about 30 minutes. 6. Preheat the oven to 220c / 200 Fan / Gas 7.7. Bake. Carefully remove the baking tray and fougasse dough from the plastic bag. Drizzle olive oil over the dough. Scatter with a few fresh rosemary leaves. Place the baking tray into the hot oven and bake for 15 – 20 minutes.  The bread will be nicely golden and will sound hollow when the base is tapped.

 

This post has been shared with:

Great Bloggers Bake Off hosted by Jenny at Mummy Mishaps

 

The Bake off Bake Along co-hosted by Amanda at Rhyme and Ribbons and Ala at This Particular.

 

 

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  1. I love that Mr E watches Bake Off too and gets a say in what you make after the show. Mr SearchingforSpice secretly likes it too and I've even caught him watching it by himself to catch up when I've watched it first! The fougasse looks delicious – I love homemade bread.

    Reply

    • Hahaha, I like that Mr SearchingforSpice catches up on the episodes that you have already seen, we've not had that eventually yet, but I don't think mr E would do that even though he helps in the decision about what to make!
      You can't beat homemade bread can you, it's so much nicer than shop bought stuff,
      Angela x

      Reply

  3. This looks delicious! I found it really hard to make the slits as my dough was still a bit sticky but yours look perfect. Well done for doing two names this week! #CookBlogShare

    Reply

    • Yeah, my dough wanted to stick to my fingers too whilst i made the slits, but i just coated my fingers in a little flour and hey presto i managed to open out the dough more. i think I'll try to reflect that in the recipe, thanks for mentioning it Mandy,
      Angela x

      Reply

  5. Another one who has had a very busy week of baking! this looks delicious too. your dough looks really soft and inviting and i bet it smelt as good as it tastes! thank you for linking up x

    Reply

  6. Your fougasse looks delicious. I love eating it with humous. I always use my Kenwood and dough hook as it allows me to get on with other stuff while the Kenwood is doing it's magic. Lovely pictures btw 🙂

    Reply

    • Awe you're too kind Lorna, my images are definitely a 'work in progress'! I have a stand mixer (not a kenwood sadly) with dough hooks but to be honest it's not great at kneading dough! When my wrists have really flared up I've even enrolled hubby with the kneading process, after all he's the one who eats the lion's share of it, and he does a pretty good job too 😉
      Thanks for your lovely comments Lorna,
      Angela x

      Reply

  8. Well done for getting Mr E to watch Bake Off – Mr G is not at all interested and mostly disappears off to find something more 'interesting' to do! Though perhaps he would be more keen if he though he was actually going to get to eat something shown on Bake Off! Your fougasse looks amazing – I love the idea of using rosemary and thyme (though I really think you should have eaten it whilst watching Rosemary and Thyme!) such lovely herbs – I bet it tasted fabulous!! Eb x

    Reply

    • Something more 'interesting' than bake off- is that at all possible Eb?? 😉 Hahaha yes, indeed, it probably does help the fact that he gets to help make the decision about what will get baked (and therefore eaten!). Yes! I'll not be able to watch those amateur sleuthes now without thinking that I should have some Fougasse flavoured with rosemary and thyme to hand 😉
      Thanks for your lovely comment Eb,
      Angela x.

      Reply

    • Hahaha, they're funny aren't they. Infact Mr E is often correct in his suggestions of who should get star baker and be sent home. I love baking along with GBBO Alison, I learn so many new techniques and get to try recipes I'd never heard of before let alone tried.
      Angela. x

      Reply

  10. It looks great! I'm sorry to hear you have pains in your wrist. For this bake I used a hand mixer with the dough hooks and it was great. It can be helpful if you want to make it again, but don't want to add pressure to the hands. x

    Reply

    • Ah thankyou Anca. My hand mixer does have some dough hooks but I haven't actually considered using them thinking the dough would be too strong for the smaller engine of a hand mixer to work through. I'll have to give it a try seen as you've had success with it.
      Angela x

      Reply

  11. Your finished loaf looks amazing Angela and I think you were right to reduce the amount made. I seldom knead dough by hand either opting like you for no knead breads or using a dough hook of my kenwood. Im going to have to make Fougasse at some point it look delicious.

    Reply

    • Yeah, I have to say that a lot of recipes are geared up for families and so when you are feeding only a couple of people the quantities really do need scaling back. We have a standmixer at home, sadly not a Kenwood, and although it came with dough hooks I've found it to be pretty useless at kneading bread dough to be honest. So it's usually no-knead bread, shop bought or I've even been known to enlist the help of hubby from time to time!
      Angela x

      Reply