Chapter 1: What is focaccia and how is it traditionally made?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance. I'm joined by chef Adrian Martin. I'm completely distracted, Adrian, because you have this lovely focaccia with you that you've made. What is that? Tell us what it is. I'm good.
So this is rhubarb focaccia. So I wanted to basically showcase a recipe that goes back... so, so long in Italy, in Italian cuisine. And I wanted to show basically the traditional way of making it.
Chapter 2: What unique ingredients can be used in focaccia recipes?
So focaccia can be stuffed with anything. And just to showcase that, I've made a rhubarb jam. So it's basically, I've picked rhubarb out of the garden. I have a kg of it. I'll tell you how to make jam firstly, because this is the starting point of this recipe. So basically, you take a kg of rhubarb, you take a kg of sugar, okay? You mix both together into a saucepan.
You add seven grams of pectin, which you can buy. Now, you can buy jam sugar if you can't get pectin.
Yeah.
Chapter 3: How do you make rhubarb jam for focaccia?
And then you mix the two together. And then I have two vanilla pods into that and a little squeeze of lemon juice. And I place that onto the hob. So no other liquid. No other liquid. Place that onto the hob. Let that boil away, simmer down. And then I blitz it when it softens.
And if you find that your rhubarb isn't that colourful and it loses quite a bit of colour, you can add a little bit of red food colouring in there if you're stuck as well. So that's a simple jam.
So just on the bread, I think most people will be used to a savoury focaccia. Is this unusual what you've made? It's not.
Not in Italy. In Italy, traditionally, focaccia is just literally flour, yeast, salt and olive oil and water. That's basically it. And what they used to do, serve it at breakfast time and dip it into their coffee. So that was always traditionally what it was made of. Then you have then what's more known in restaurants where we add garlic and we add rosemary and
thyme and sea salt on top and everything as well.
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Chapter 4: What are the essential ingredients for making focaccia?
But then this trend came and I love a trend because I love jumping on the bandwagon and you basically have these gorgeous sweet focaccia. So I've made a raspberry version of this. So basically this is stuffed with my rhubarb jam. So I'll talk you through the recipe for focaccia because it's quite simple.
You've rhubarb and raspberry in this?
So rhubarb, no raspberry in this one, but I made a raspberry one earlier last week. So I've been going through everything at the moment. So basically the focaccia recipe is 500 grams of strong flour. So strong flour is glutinous. When you knead it, it becomes stretchy and it creates an elasticity on the outside of the dough.
So when you knead a dough, you're looking to create like an elastic band on the outside, which holds in all the air bubbles on the inside. So that's the idea of it. So you start with 500 grams of that. With focaccia, it's a lot more water liquid to a normal bread recipe. So it's 420 ml of water. Now you can take that up to 100% hydration, which is basically 500 ml of water either.
But it is quite hard to handle at that stage. So you add your yeast to it. So I just add a 7 gram sachet of yeast, 2 pinches of salt and 2 pinches of sugar, and that's your dough recipe.
So that's a gloopy mess at that stage.
Yeah. So it's a gloopy mess. You mix it, cover it. And in 15 minutes time, you're going to oil your hands and you're going to do a thing which is called the folding method for making bread. So basically you fold the dough over itself. Oil your hands really important. Otherwise it sticks to you and it's a nightmare.
And people come along then and they add more flour to their hands and the dough and think that's the right thing to do. And it completely wrecks the recipe.
We're panicking.
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Chapter 5: What is the importance of kneading dough in focaccia preparation?
Yeah, you're panicking at that point.
So what surface are you using to fold this on?
Oh, I'm not doing it on any surface. I'm literally doing it in the bowl. Just literally leave it in the bowl and just literally turn it over itself. Literally a very simple process. Now, if you're very lazy like me, you can just leave it and leave it for an hour and a half and it'll prove away itself and it'll almost do its job itself.
Instead of doing the folding method, you can just leave it and it's a no-nose focaccia. So that's the easier method of it. When you take it out then of it, it's really important that at this point that you knock out some of the air. So it's called knocking back the dough. So you want to create a second rise because the second rise is the spongy rise basically.
So we would always describe it that, so you knock out the air, you line your tray with olive oil. You place your focaccia in and you let it rise again. And then at this point, then on the second rise, then you can add your flavouring. So I've added the rhubarb jam and then you dimple the focaccia. So dimpling means to get your fingertips in the oil and literally dimple all along the focaccia.
That's what gives it that traditional look that we know so well.
And then you bake it. Then once it's on its second rise, you bake it for 15 minutes.
So how did you shape this? Because this is in a lovely rectangular.
It's just in a tray. Yeah, it's just in a tray. Okay. Yeah, it takes the shape of the tray.
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Chapter 6: How do you achieve the perfect texture in focaccia?
It looks difficult, but it definitely is the easiest. And then I finish it with, I call this like my Krispy Kreme donut glaze.
What is that?
So this is just icing sugar and milk. It's 125 grams of icing sugar and three tablespoons of milk. You mix it together and you get this gorgeous. Do you want to try it? Because I keep describing it to you. Hand it over. Yeah, go for it.
Looks great.
I want to get this feedback now.
Making bread fills me with terror. Does it? It does, yeah, because it always goes wrong. We made a lovely, what did we try to make the other day? Just a very simple banana and ginger bread at home. Everything right, as far as I think, concerned, followed the recipe. Looked into the oven after about 20 minutes and the middle of it was gone, sunken down.
Can I ask you, where did you get your recipe from?
where did I get my recipe from?
From a book? See, this is the thing, all right? And I find this, to this day, there's so many recipes out there, but an awful lot of them are like, somebody's robbed somebody else's recipe and changed a couple of grams here or there and have never tested it.
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Chapter 7: What are the steps for baking focaccia after the second rise?
And then the focaccia comes afterwards.
It comes after, yeah. Yeah, that's the idea.
Yeah, it's delicious. So my oven, right? When I switch the fan on, it sounds like a motorbike.
Oh God, you need an oven.
Do you think that's a problem?
That's a problem, yeah.
You need a new oven, Clare. I thought it was just revving up, you know, because it cooks everything. You know, it cooks everything fine.
Yeah.
Apart from when I'm trying to bake stuff and then it goes mad.
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Chapter 8: Why is making your own bread worth the effort?
And that's down to all of the preservatives, E-numbers, everything that's in there. And there is a key message behind this.
And you're not celiac, you're not gluten intolerant.
I just get horrible cramps in my stomach. I feel terribly ill when I eat bread off the shelf in Ireland.
When you make your own bread, though.
I don't. No, I don't at all. You don't get sick from it? I don't get sick from it at all. I can eat tons of it. And generally, I use France as an example for this, because when we go to France, I can eat a full pan tradition, which is a full baguette, to myself. I love it. And I don't feel ill or anything.
But in France, the rules are you can't call it bread unless it's just flour, salt, yeast and water, the four ingredients. You're not allowed to call it bread there, so you're not... I think it's similar to us, like we've become so processed with our food. I really think it's really important that, you know, back to basics, bread is so simple to make if you know how and your oven works.
And I suppose once you get the method, you know, once you learn the couple of steps, it does become easier, doesn't it? I mean, as you describe it there with two proving stages, it sounds a little bit complicated. Yeah.
But like anything, once you do that a couple of times and you're in the groove of it and you can fit it into your week, it makes sense to try and do it yourself, doesn't it?
bake your breads you have bread made it's very simple I know bread makers as well they're brilliant I do genuinely think you don't have an issue with bread makers no I don't because I think if it gets people making bread I'm all for it absolutely I have one and I do use it from time to time but then it goes away gathers some dust for about six months and then it
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