Fired up by gas

GAS BAGS WELCOME IN THIS OLIVE OIL FLATBREAD 

These holes in the foccacia remind me of the tunnels made by termites in the base of the massive tamarind tree next to my childhood house. Not such a nice image now, but the holes in the anthill fascinated me then just as these holes in the bread fascinate me now.

This foccacia is from Dan Lepard's The Handmade Loaf – he calls it olive oil flatbread. The top is a bit darker than the picture in his book, but the beautiful pockets of air are quite similar. Only thing, the middle of my flatbread domed up a little, causing it to be not quite a flat bread, and I blame that on the uneven heat in my oven.

Dan Lepard's recipe has the addition of a white leaven as well as malt powder in the rather wet dough. He explains in this post (with recipe) on foccacia and another one on ciabatta in his blog about the factors that affect crumb aeration: water content and sufficient working of the dough during mixing – folding and stretching the dough gently help create that open texture.

Folding the dough during the first stage of kneading. This is repeated another two times.

This time, the top got a simple drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of coarse sea salt, but I'd like to try a topping of oil and tomatoes next time.

Here's more bread:

Puffy Spinach Roti

Jalapeño and Corn Loaf

Cheese and Onion Grenades