Basil-garlic Focaccia Bread

Basil-garlic Focaccia Bread

• pointsevenout 13 years ago
  Recipe by Jlv1023: Basil Garlic Focaccia Bread
  
  The dry to wet ingredient ratio is off in this recipe.
  My first guess is there is a typo in the amount of flour by one cup. I did use the amount spec'ed in the recipe but with a variable.
  First let's talk about rising power of yeast. Its power is cut back by the amounts of salt, sugar, and shortening. There is too much sugar and shortening (butter, in this case) in the recipe causing an extended rise time.
  Fortunate for me, I was able to determine this flaw before mixing the recipe.
  This recipe calls for a quarter cup butter. Normal breads use one to two tablespoons of butter. Any more starts to slow down the yeast's ability. The same can be said for the sugar.
  I cut the butter and sugar amounts in half.
  I also had some extra homemade Bisquick Mix left over from another project. I added three quarters a cup of the Bisquick Mix to two cups bread flour to make the requisite 2-3/4 cups of flour. The Bisquick Mix had shortening already mixed in it for making biscuits. So the bread recipe has additional shortening to the butter. I can't say how much but definitely not two tablespoons worth.
  The last three items of the ingredient list seemed a bit much to be sprinkled on the top of the loaf just before bake and with that much stuff on top it would not look anything like the recipe's picture. So I put two thirds of those ingredients into the flour mix and saved the last third for sprinkling. As it turns out, the top of the loaf still has a lot more sprinkled stuff on it as the recipe's picture does.
  Another inconsistency in the recipe is the amount of olive oil. Ingredient list says 4 teaspoons. Destructions list says 4 tablespoons. I settled to drizzle and spread oil on top until I thought was enough to make garlic, basil and Parmesan stick to the loaf top.
  Also I consider 1 teaspoon salt on top the loaf too much and cut it by half.
  Made the dough using a food processor. Bloomed the yeast in 1/4c warm water and incorporated it first in the bread mix along with the butter and egg. Then started slowly incorporating the milk. It took only half a cup of milk to make the dough ball up and clean the side of the processor, eventually having to add back in 3 handfuls of flour to make the processor knead the dough properly without sticking, still having a quarter cup milk left over.
  Now if the flour amount was increased to 3-3/4 cups, then it might have turned out right.
  First rise time was 1.5 hours. Second rise time was 1.5 hours. I didn't have to wait the extra half hour between the two rise times to let the dough relax in order to shape it.
  
  All that said, the focaccia loaf turned out wonderful, even with a little extended rise time. I just can't imaging how many hours I would have had to wait for the yeast to do its job if I had followed the recipe to spec.
  
  IMHO this recipe needs a rewrite.
  Flavor is great by my modifications and the loaf is almost all consumed.
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