Being from the south of France one of my greatest disappointments about Paris is the lack of proper fougasse. There's only one boulangerie whose fougasse is slightly better than decent to me, aptly named La Fougasse on the rue de Bretagne in the Marais. All the others I've sampled in hope of finding a fougasse that would be a quick fix have been entirely in vain because yes, I am a snob when it comes to bread. And yes, I mean really, really snobby.
The truth is that lots of French boulangeries in Paris take the shortcut of serving up fougasse made with regular old baguette dough that is baked with a variety of ingredients and basted with poor quality olive oil. The key to fougasse, in the true Provencal tradition is that olive oil goes into the dough itself along with whatever garnishes you're using to make your fougasse. I looked at a great number of recipes online and let me just say, if you're adding sugar to your fougasse recipe or proofing your yeast with this same sugar and warm water, you are not making fougasse - you're making the Italian version of this bread called focaccia and while they share some similarities, the texture and taste is not the same.
What you rarely see outside of Provence is a type of sweet fougasse, which is one of the thirteen traditional desserts of an authentic Provencal Christmas known as le gros souper. These thirteen desserts are meant to represent Jesus and the twelve apostles and the desserts can vary, but I would find it a bit odd if sweet fougasse made with orange water weren't included along with the others. In my family it was an obligatoire part of les treize and it was absolutely pas d'accord to cut the fougasse with a knife (to protect oneself from financial ruin in the New Year is the superstition).
So tonight we're having dinner with our French neighbours, but I was told to cook nothing (which of course isn't polite to do) and I don't want to make anything that won't complement their meal, so I decided to make fougasse because well, honestly, there are few people who could out-fougasse me thanks to the patience of my grandmother who thought I should learn to make one of my favourite foods properly. I've been making savory fougasse for my family since I was six years old.
This is not a recipe to undertake if you don't have a mininum of 5 hours to kill. Yes, five hours. Much of that time will be spent waiting for your dough because the actually cooking only takes about 8 - 10 minutes. Make your dough as close to serving time as possible. Since we're expected at 7 o'clock I'll be pulling these out of the oven at about 6:45.
Now in terms of garnish - you can garnish savory fougasse with a lot of different vegetables, meats, cheeses, and spices but for today I've decided to make a more "modern" garnished fougasse along with the most traditional variety which is made with herbes de provence.
Since the garnished fougasse is a bit trickier, I'll focus on the process of making this style and add some notes for the traditional variety I mentioned earlier.
I've chosen to use spicy chorizo sausage, grilled red peppers, fresh sage, and mozzarella for my glitzy fougasse, all of which will need to be prepared to some extent.
The way I will list this recipe will be in terms of the time markers by hour.
Equipment:
Pastry knife or very sharp kitchen knife
Rubber spatula
Mixing bowls
Parchment paper
Clean dish towels
Baking sheet
Rolling pin
Mixer with bread hook can be used in place of the hand kneading technique I'll be using because I prefer the texture of the dough it gives and though exhausting, it's quite fun.
Hour 0:
Start the dough by mixing 165 g of bread flour with 165 ml of tepid water and 2 grams of yeast.
It will make a sort of liquid paste, which is exactly what you want. Let sit covered with a clean dish towel at room temperature for 2 hours.
Now I want to take this opportunity, from what I've seen on the Internet to explain a few things about flour and conversions.
In France there are many, many types of flour used in baking and an equally number of confusing numbers and words, etc. For this recipe you need T55 type flour, or bread flour, known in France as farine boulanger.
For conversion, which I hate to do because baking is meant to be precise and using the metric system is much better for baking, but for those of you without metric measuring cups or a scale, to calculate 165 g of bread flour = about 6 oz which = just shy of 1 3/4 c. This applies to water since the 165 ml = 165 g = just shy of 6 fluid ounces = just shy of 1 3/4 c of water.
2 grams of dry active yeast = .235 tablespoons or just shy of 3/4 tsp.
Here is a very helpful link for conversions that will be a big help for those of you switching between metric and imperial for cooking.
Now that the dough has been started you have two hours to prepare the garnishes.
15 mins:
I've covered the dough mixture to let it sit for 2 hrs and set my alarm just in case. The peppers have been grilling at 250 degrees, halved, deseeded, but stem bit left on, and basted with olive oil for about 10 minutes. Once they start to burn up, I'll take them out, allow them to cool, and then chop them to the desired size.
I've picked about 10 leaves of sage from the balcony garden and with take out the stem of the leaf and chop them coarsely. I use about 3/4 of the chopped sage in the dough and reserve the rest to sprinkle on top after the fougasse has baked.
I'm using an actual chorizo sausage, which I like because the pieces can be as thin or thick as I like. The thickness of the chorizo is very important to the overall texture of the fougasse. I remove any casing and slice it relatively thin. Set aside.
I chop the mozzarella because I prefer the way the cheese melts during baking. I use about 50 g (1/2 c) for the baking process and then grate a little bit more to add during the last stages of baking.
Once the peppers are cooled and chopped, combine the peppers, sage, chorizo, and mozzarella with 25 ml (just over 5 tsp) of olive oil and set aside.
* Since I'm making a double batch of dough (this recipe is for one fougasse but I doubled it), I will eventually divide the dough into two portions (one portion for the chorizo mixture, the other for the traditional version). I combine in a separate bowl 4 g (1 1/2 tsp) of herbes de provence and 3 cloves of minced garlic with 25 ml (just over 5 tsp) of olive oil and set aside to infuse.
1 hour, 10 minutes
Am now playing the waiting game.
2 hours
Take the starting dough mixture and add: 185 ml (slightly more than 3/4 c) of water, 335 grams of bread flour (just over 2 1/2 c), 1.5 g of dry active yeast (slightly more than 1/2 tsp), 10 g (1.76 tsp) fleur de sel (sea salt or kosher salt also work). When adding the yeast add to one side of the bowl and salt to the other.
*Now here is the important part.
If using a mixer with a bread hook, mix the ingredients at lowest speed for about a minute, then at highest speed for about 6 minutes. The dough should be smooth, soft, yet not too wet.
If hand kneading, the above video can explain much better than I can. Watch him carefully, how he makes sure to pull the dough over and how he turns the dough on the surface (think of your dough as a square, so four turns per rotation). This will put the right amount of air into the dough and make for an exceptional dough. It is also a great workout for your arms!
Make sure you dust your surface before hand kneading, but not excessively. The end product should be smooth looking, but full of air.
Since I've doubled this I'm going to halve the dough and then add the two different garnishes to each half and then let each dough rest in a mixing bowl for another hour.
* Now if you used chunky ingredients you might be worried that not everything has gotten into the dough. Fret not. Fret not if the olive oil has not completely absorbed into the dough either. You'll have another chance later on to incorporate everything, just let it sit because the yeast added in this step needs some time to do its thing. This isn't essential to the recipe, but it will reduce the stress of the waiting time - eat something. Relax. Your fougasse is going to be lovely. Sure you completely forgot to make sure you had the perfect bread basket for the presentation of your finished fougasse. Damn being a culinary perfectionist.
At this point I'm tempted to take a shower, but since there is one more step involving flour, I have to resist even though I'm covered in flour.
* One thing to note. After the 1 hour wait time you'll be working towards "proofing" the dough once it's been rolled out. Proofing is basically the final step before baking for bread, where the yeast and flour begin to ferment. Much of the rising is going to happen at this point. In most bread recipes you proof the yeast with warm water and sugar before adding it to the flour, but this method does not make the best fougasse. Granted this is time consuming, but it really does give the best results. Trust me you want all that air (fou - gas(se) because it makes the softest and most delicious bread.
There are a lot of proofing techniques for various breads, but for fougasse my grandmother always put the breads on cooking sheets in the oven with a pot of boiled water. So make sure you're ready for this step before the hour is up - make sure you've got your baking sheets together (I'm using two) and that your pot of water will be boiling by the time you need to put everything in the oven to proof.
3 hours
Divide dough into 300 g pieces and shape into a ball. Place on a cutting board or parchment paper with enough room between them, and let rest covered with plastic film (I used parchment paper as I was out of plastic wrap) for 15 minutes.
Use the 15 mins to cover your baking sheets with fresh parchment
* With the double recipe I ended up with 8 balls of the pepper, chorizo, mozzarella variety dough and 4 of the herbes de provence and garlic, which means I didn't divide the dough exactly in half earlier, but it was partly because I wanted to have a little more dough for the variety with more ingredients in it.
3 hours, 15 mins
Take one of the balls and stretch it into a rectangular shape, pressing out some of the gas. Keep stretching until you have a nice rectangular shape. Use a rolling pin but make sure to not to roll out the dough thinner than 6.5 mm (1/4 inch). Using the pastry knife make the traditional cuts. These cuts are meant to make the fougasse look like a leaf from the tree of life.
Have a look on Google Images, there are lots of beautiful examples and possibilites to make your fougasse as beautiful to look at as it will be delicious to eat.
* For the pepper, chorizo, mozzarella variety you can't use the rolling pin and you can't make the cuts.
Move them to the parchment/baking sheets leaving plenty of room because they will rise and expand.
4 hours, 15 minutes
Remove all the baking sheets and the pot of water from the oven and preheat your oven to 250 degrees (C).
I started with the pepper, chorizo, and mozzarella fougasse first because they would take longer to bake. About 10 minutes in they were browning up nicely, but I wanted to baste them to get a really nice crunch, so I mixed some olive oil with salt and pepper, and baked them right under the broiler until they were nicely browned up after 5 more minutes.
For the simpler fougasse I baked them for about 8 minutes, basted them with the olive oil infused with garlic and herbes de provence (plus salt and pepper to taste) and baked them another 3 minutes.
I was running late for dinner so I didn't take time to snap any photographs, but I kept one of the simpler fougasse and then forgot to take pictures of it before I snacked on it when I got home, so sorry about the pictures. I'll update this post the next time I make it.
Here are a few pictures of the one fougasse I kept to snack on.
The truth is that lots of French boulangeries in Paris take the shortcut of serving up fougasse made with regular old baguette dough that is baked with a variety of ingredients and basted with poor quality olive oil. The key to fougasse, in the true Provencal tradition is that olive oil goes into the dough itself along with whatever garnishes you're using to make your fougasse. I looked at a great number of recipes online and let me just say, if you're adding sugar to your fougasse recipe or proofing your yeast with this same sugar and warm water, you are not making fougasse - you're making the Italian version of this bread called focaccia and while they share some similarities, the texture and taste is not the same.
What you rarely see outside of Provence is a type of sweet fougasse, which is one of the thirteen traditional desserts of an authentic Provencal Christmas known as le gros souper. These thirteen desserts are meant to represent Jesus and the twelve apostles and the desserts can vary, but I would find it a bit odd if sweet fougasse made with orange water weren't included along with the others. In my family it was an obligatoire part of les treize and it was absolutely pas d'accord to cut the fougasse with a knife (to protect oneself from financial ruin in the New Year is the superstition).
So tonight we're having dinner with our French neighbours, but I was told to cook nothing (which of course isn't polite to do) and I don't want to make anything that won't complement their meal, so I decided to make fougasse because well, honestly, there are few people who could out-fougasse me thanks to the patience of my grandmother who thought I should learn to make one of my favourite foods properly. I've been making savory fougasse for my family since I was six years old.
This is not a recipe to undertake if you don't have a mininum of 5 hours to kill. Yes, five hours. Much of that time will be spent waiting for your dough because the actually cooking only takes about 8 - 10 minutes. Make your dough as close to serving time as possible. Since we're expected at 7 o'clock I'll be pulling these out of the oven at about 6:45.
Now in terms of garnish - you can garnish savory fougasse with a lot of different vegetables, meats, cheeses, and spices but for today I've decided to make a more "modern" garnished fougasse along with the most traditional variety which is made with herbes de provence.
Since the garnished fougasse is a bit trickier, I'll focus on the process of making this style and add some notes for the traditional variety I mentioned earlier.
I've chosen to use spicy chorizo sausage, grilled red peppers, fresh sage, and mozzarella for my glitzy fougasse, all of which will need to be prepared to some extent.
The way I will list this recipe will be in terms of the time markers by hour.
Equipment:
Pastry knife or very sharp kitchen knife
Rubber spatula
Mixing bowls
Parchment paper
Clean dish towels
Baking sheet
Rolling pin
Mixer with bread hook can be used in place of the hand kneading technique I'll be using because I prefer the texture of the dough it gives and though exhausting, it's quite fun.
Hour 0:
Start the dough by mixing 165 g of bread flour with 165 ml of tepid water and 2 grams of yeast.
It will make a sort of liquid paste, which is exactly what you want. Let sit covered with a clean dish towel at room temperature for 2 hours.
Now I want to take this opportunity, from what I've seen on the Internet to explain a few things about flour and conversions.
In France there are many, many types of flour used in baking and an equally number of confusing numbers and words, etc. For this recipe you need T55 type flour, or bread flour, known in France as farine boulanger.
For conversion, which I hate to do because baking is meant to be precise and using the metric system is much better for baking, but for those of you without metric measuring cups or a scale, to calculate 165 g of bread flour = about 6 oz which = just shy of 1 3/4 c. This applies to water since the 165 ml = 165 g = just shy of 6 fluid ounces = just shy of 1 3/4 c of water.
2 grams of dry active yeast = .235 tablespoons or just shy of 3/4 tsp.
Here is a very helpful link for conversions that will be a big help for those of you switching between metric and imperial for cooking.
Now that the dough has been started you have two hours to prepare the garnishes.
15 mins:
I've covered the dough mixture to let it sit for 2 hrs and set my alarm just in case. The peppers have been grilling at 250 degrees, halved, deseeded, but stem bit left on, and basted with olive oil for about 10 minutes. Once they start to burn up, I'll take them out, allow them to cool, and then chop them to the desired size.
I've picked about 10 leaves of sage from the balcony garden and with take out the stem of the leaf and chop them coarsely. I use about 3/4 of the chopped sage in the dough and reserve the rest to sprinkle on top after the fougasse has baked.
I'm using an actual chorizo sausage, which I like because the pieces can be as thin or thick as I like. The thickness of the chorizo is very important to the overall texture of the fougasse. I remove any casing and slice it relatively thin. Set aside.
I chop the mozzarella because I prefer the way the cheese melts during baking. I use about 50 g (1/2 c) for the baking process and then grate a little bit more to add during the last stages of baking.
Once the peppers are cooled and chopped, combine the peppers, sage, chorizo, and mozzarella with 25 ml (just over 5 tsp) of olive oil and set aside.
* Since I'm making a double batch of dough (this recipe is for one fougasse but I doubled it), I will eventually divide the dough into two portions (one portion for the chorizo mixture, the other for the traditional version). I combine in a separate bowl 4 g (1 1/2 tsp) of herbes de provence and 3 cloves of minced garlic with 25 ml (just over 5 tsp) of olive oil and set aside to infuse.
1 hour, 10 minutes
Am now playing the waiting game.
2 hours
Take the starting dough mixture and add: 185 ml (slightly more than 3/4 c) of water, 335 grams of bread flour (just over 2 1/2 c), 1.5 g of dry active yeast (slightly more than 1/2 tsp), 10 g (1.76 tsp) fleur de sel (sea salt or kosher salt also work). When adding the yeast add to one side of the bowl and salt to the other.
*Now here is the important part.
If using a mixer with a bread hook, mix the ingredients at lowest speed for about a minute, then at highest speed for about 6 minutes. The dough should be smooth, soft, yet not too wet.
If hand kneading, the above video can explain much better than I can. Watch him carefully, how he makes sure to pull the dough over and how he turns the dough on the surface (think of your dough as a square, so four turns per rotation). This will put the right amount of air into the dough and make for an exceptional dough. It is also a great workout for your arms!
Make sure you dust your surface before hand kneading, but not excessively. The end product should be smooth looking, but full of air.
Since I've doubled this I'm going to halve the dough and then add the two different garnishes to each half and then let each dough rest in a mixing bowl for another hour.
* Now if you used chunky ingredients you might be worried that not everything has gotten into the dough. Fret not. Fret not if the olive oil has not completely absorbed into the dough either. You'll have another chance later on to incorporate everything, just let it sit because the yeast added in this step needs some time to do its thing. This isn't essential to the recipe, but it will reduce the stress of the waiting time - eat something. Relax. Your fougasse is going to be lovely. Sure you completely forgot to make sure you had the perfect bread basket for the presentation of your finished fougasse. Damn being a culinary perfectionist.
At this point I'm tempted to take a shower, but since there is one more step involving flour, I have to resist even though I'm covered in flour.
* One thing to note. After the 1 hour wait time you'll be working towards "proofing" the dough once it's been rolled out. Proofing is basically the final step before baking for bread, where the yeast and flour begin to ferment. Much of the rising is going to happen at this point. In most bread recipes you proof the yeast with warm water and sugar before adding it to the flour, but this method does not make the best fougasse. Granted this is time consuming, but it really does give the best results. Trust me you want all that air (fou - gas(se) because it makes the softest and most delicious bread.
There are a lot of proofing techniques for various breads, but for fougasse my grandmother always put the breads on cooking sheets in the oven with a pot of boiled water. So make sure you're ready for this step before the hour is up - make sure you've got your baking sheets together (I'm using two) and that your pot of water will be boiling by the time you need to put everything in the oven to proof.
3 hours
Divide dough into 300 g pieces and shape into a ball. Place on a cutting board or parchment paper with enough room between them, and let rest covered with plastic film (I used parchment paper as I was out of plastic wrap) for 15 minutes.
Use the 15 mins to cover your baking sheets with fresh parchment
* With the double recipe I ended up with 8 balls of the pepper, chorizo, mozzarella variety dough and 4 of the herbes de provence and garlic, which means I didn't divide the dough exactly in half earlier, but it was partly because I wanted to have a little more dough for the variety with more ingredients in it.
3 hours, 15 mins
Take one of the balls and stretch it into a rectangular shape, pressing out some of the gas. Keep stretching until you have a nice rectangular shape. Use a rolling pin but make sure to not to roll out the dough thinner than 6.5 mm (1/4 inch). Using the pastry knife make the traditional cuts. These cuts are meant to make the fougasse look like a leaf from the tree of life.
Have a look on Google Images, there are lots of beautiful examples and possibilites to make your fougasse as beautiful to look at as it will be delicious to eat.
* For the pepper, chorizo, mozzarella variety you can't use the rolling pin and you can't make the cuts.
Move them to the parchment/baking sheets leaving plenty of room because they will rise and expand.
4 hours, 15 minutes
Remove all the baking sheets and the pot of water from the oven and preheat your oven to 250 degrees (C).
I started with the pepper, chorizo, and mozzarella fougasse first because they would take longer to bake. About 10 minutes in they were browning up nicely, but I wanted to baste them to get a really nice crunch, so I mixed some olive oil with salt and pepper, and baked them right under the broiler until they were nicely browned up after 5 more minutes.
For the simpler fougasse I baked them for about 8 minutes, basted them with the olive oil infused with garlic and herbes de provence (plus salt and pepper to taste) and baked them another 3 minutes.
I was running late for dinner so I didn't take time to snap any photographs, but I kept one of the simpler fougasse and then forgot to take pictures of it before I snacked on it when I got home, so sorry about the pictures. I'll update this post the next time I make it.
Here are a few pictures of the one fougasse I kept to snack on.
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