Fougasse

A flat olive-oil bread cut right through to the tray and then pulled open, so the slits stay open and every edge crisps.

Vegan. Vegetarian only if you leave out the optional lardons, which are pork.

Ingredients

• 500 g strong white flour
• 320 ml water
• 60 ml olive oil, plus more to finish
• 10 g salt
• 5 g fast-action yeast
• coarse salt and rosemary, to finish
• 100 g olives or lardons, optional

Method

1. THE CUTS ARE MADE RIGHT THROUGH TO THE TRAY AND THEN PULLED OPEN. Both halves of that matter. A cut that stops short of the bottom closes up as the dough proves and bakes, and you get a flat loaf with scars on it. Cut through, then the dough gently stretched sideways so each slit becomes a hole two or three centimetres wide -- they will shrink by half in the oven, so open them further than looks sensible.
2. THE POINT OF THE SLITS IS EDGE. This bread is mostly crust by design: every cut makes two more crisp edges, which is why it is cut like a leaf rather than baked as a slab.
3. A SCRAPER OR A SHARP BLADE, NOT A KNIFE. A blunt knife drags the dough and seals the cut as it goes, which is the same fault as a crushed puff edge.
4. IT IS PROVED ON THE TRAY AFTER CUTTING, not before. Cut while slack and it tears; cut after a full prove and you knock all the gas out.
5. AND IT IS BAKED HOT AND FAST, 15 minutes at 230C. It is thin, and any longer dries it to a cracker.
6. Flour, yeast, water and the oil mixed and kneaded 8 minutes to a smooth slack dough. The salt added after 2 minutes.
7. Olives or lardons folded through now if using.
8. Risen covered 1 hour 30 minutes until doubled.
9. Tipped onto an oiled tray and pressed out with oiled fingers to a flat oval about 1.5 cm thick.
10. CUT with a scraper: one long slit down the middle, then three or four angled slits each side, all the way THROUGH to the tray.
11. The dough stretched sideways with both hands to PULL THE SLITS OPEN to 2 or 3 cm each.
12. Proved uncovered on the tray 30 minutes.
13. Brushed with oil, coarse salt and rosemary scattered over.
14. Baked at 230C for 15 minutes until golden and crisp at every edge. Eaten warm, the same day, torn rather than cut.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under France · All recipes