Attn: LARRRRRRRRY!

[Jenise]

So I want to make a focaccia. My standard recipe, which I love, calls for 3.5 c flour and 5 tsp yeast and a 5 hour rise.

But I need to bake it first thing in the morning. And I don't want to get up at 2 a.m. to mix the dough.

So, as a test, I just mixed a batch and put it in the fridge for a slower rise. I'll monitor it over the next 24 hours to see how long it takes to rise and get to the baking stage. Questions: do you think I'll get a quality rise in the fridge? And if so about how long would you expect that to take?

Looking forward to your answers and I'm open to suggestions for another method that wouldn't require me to be up all night.

[Jenise]

1:30 update: four hours in, it's fully risen. So much for cold and slow. Leaving it alone, will bake after 8 hours to see how far I can take it if later this week I make the dough just before going to bed.

1:30 update: four hours in, it's fully risen. So much for cold and slow. Leaving it alone, will bake after 8 hours to see how far I can take it if later this week I make the dough just before going to bed.

I DIDN'T DO IT! IT WASN'T ME!

I'm curious to see if it will be over-proofed when you bake it (or are you going to punch it down for a second rising before baking?).. You can certainly cut back on the yeast to keep it from rising too much in the fridge. Should have improved taste, though. Let's hear about it. Inquiring minds want to know.

[Jenise]

So I ran out of patience and removed the dough at 5:30. The character of this dough is that the first rise includes doubling, then some deflation, then more rising but this time less than double, then punch down and move to the baking pan. I let it sit out at room temp with the cling film on for about 30 minutes before deciding that was dumb, I should remove the film as it had so much dough stuck to it that I couldn't be certain what was underneath.

Good move, as the actual dough level was about two inches below the rim. I covered it with a towel and moved it to a the warming drawer, proof setting (god I love having a warming drawer). After about an hour it began to rise again and I decided it was time to move it to the baking pan.

I let it settle in the pan for another 30 minutes and then baked it. It rose during the bake and the center was about 2 inches high, more than usual. Some air holes--not as many as I would like but enough--and a very crunchy exterior. It's the most attractive thing about this particular foccacia recipe, that crunchy exterior.

I might make another one tomorrow but reduce the yeast 20% just to compare results--a slightly less vigorous rise would probably be a benefit.

On Wednesday night I'll be fine making the dough and refrigerating it overnight. Get up around 7:00, bake around 9:30, and by 10:30 it will be on its way to Vancouver.

...and by 10:30 it will be on its way to Vancouver.

I like a bread that can deliver itself. Saves a lot of driving, don't you think?

[Jenise]

I like a bread that can deliver itself. Saves a lot of driving, don't you think?

Won't happen. I'm the armed escort.

[Jenise]

So, the after-report: Based on my test batch and then rethinking the quantity, I decided to increase the dough to better fill an 11 x 17 pan. So 3 and 2/3 c flour became 5, and everything else increased by the same ratio except the yeast in better support of a slow/cold rise, even if fractionally. The dough went into the fridge at 10:30 p.m. and off we went to bed, with the alarm set for 7.

Where I laid awake most of the night.

Awake, obsessing about my dough (and eventually the sleep I wasn't getting). Two things bugged me: I had decided to divide the dough between two glass bowls. In the largest bowl I have, the original recipe hits it's head on the ceiling of the cling film and I usually end up leaving some dough behind there. To avoid that, two bowls--but wait, I couldn't mix the finished doughs, and side by side in the pan I'd end up with an unsightly seam. After many hours I worked out that I should dump the smaller bowl upside down on top of the larger bowl, so the surface with the heavy olive oil would be the new upper side, then dump the big bowl upside down into the baking pan. Now there would be no seam, or if there was it would be horizontal and undetectable to the eye. This manouver, stupid or genius, was all it takes to keep me away on a project I'm deeply committed to. Oh, and the second bugger, was that when I removed the dough from the KA mixing bowl whose dough hook doesn't effectively reach the bottom of the bowl*, I found some unincorporated flour and crusty bits of insufficiently mixed dough ended up in one of the glass bowls. I picked those out by hand, but wasn't sure I got all the crusty bits. What if those didn't bake out? Doesn't take much to ruin my night. Toss turn, toss turn, get up and feed BabyGURRRL more baby food, go back to bed, toss turn toss turn toss turn.

*You guys here pointed out to me the adjustment on the KA machine. Problem is that the screw is in there so tight we can't budge it so we've never been able to re-adjust for the dough hook (the height is fine with the regular mixing attachments, essentially my hook is short.)

At 6:30 I gave up on sleep, turned off the alarm and got up and went to attend my dough. Once in the baking pan, I covered the top with halved castelveltrano olives, dried oregano, salt and cracked pepper, and put the pan in the warming drawer to spread and rise--I held my breath for the next two hours. At 9:00, it looked gorgeous, got the final douse of olive oil and went into the oven.

It had time to cool before getting wrapped in parchment for the trip to Van. The result was beautiful. Big holes, chewy, and the incredible unique crunchy crust that this recipe produces that's like no other focaccia I know. Could not have been better.

And now I have two recipes, one for the larger pan, and the knowledge that I can make this dough overnight. Hurray, hurray. But what a way to do it.

Brava!

You make the loaf sound so good that I almost want to ask for the recipe. (But I'm not really interested in baking bread so I will restrain myself.)

Glad to hear that the sleepless night paid off. Regarding the rising dough hitting the cling film, would it work to put an inverted bowl over the one holding the dough and then put cling film around the lips of the two bowls to provide an air seal? That would give you the headroom for the rise without dough sticking to the cling film.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Paul, good idea and that would work if I had two bowls the same size which I don't, at least that I know of. But regardless, my other way worked out great, worried as I was about it.

Unless I’m missing something a little olive oil on the underside of the cling film does the trick.

[Jenise]

If I put oil on the cling film I would mess up the way the cling film clings to the edges of the bowl. I daub the top of the dough with oil instead. But still, some sticks because the surface area of the risen dough is greater.