Tuesdays With Dorie – Baking with Julia: Fruit Focaccia

This focaccia was definitely a lesson in planning for me.  Silly me thought that I would be able whip this up in a day, take some pictures, and call it a wrap. (Silly me should have read the recipe sooner).  Attention everyone, THIS IS A 48 HOUR BREAD, so plan ahead! The actual process for making this focaccia is not difficult, just very time consuming.

Luscious macerated fruit waiting for the dough to knead

This recipe starts by macerating dried cranberries and golden raisins for three hours. Then, you wake up the yeast using some of the sweet fruit juice leftover from macerating the fruit. Next, you add in the honey (I used orange blossom honey), orange zest, flour, and, eventually, the fruit to make a dough.  After taking the dough through several stages of kneading, you place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and let it rise for 3 hours before placing it in the refrigerator for 24 hours. After 24 hours, it comes out of the refrigerator, is shaped, and is placed on a baking pan to rise for 3 more hours before it finally gets covered with a glaze and makes it into the oven.

 1) first rise, 2) shaping, 3) second rise, 4) baking

Can you see daylight fading on me?

Five points to your respective Hogwarts houses if you know where this is from

It came out of the oven on Tuesday… that totally counts, right?

I actually halved my recipe, and it still made plenty.  It was so tasty!  The recipe says to bake the dough for 25-30 minutes.  I would recommend the lower end of that baking time as mine came out of the oven quite browned. The fruit was perfectly distributed throughout the focaccia, and the flavor of the cranberry was very prominent.  I warmed up a few slices for breakfast and spread a little butter on top! Yum!

You can find out who else made this bread and what they thought here!

While this video does not contain the exact recipe seen here, it does show the author of the recipe discussing and making other focaccia recipes! I found it helpful all the same!