Garlic Fougasse

Garlic Fougasse | Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

This is the season of soup. It’s cold outside here in Minnesota and there’s nothing better than a cup of hot soup. Oh, and there’s all that leftover turkey to deal with and the beautiful butternut squash proliferation at the grocery store. To go with all that soup you’ll be making, there’s nothing better than homemade bread. This fougasse is a traditional Provencale French flatbread. It is both crispy, due to all that crusty surface and tender on the inside. It’s like a fancy breadstick. Because it is a flatbread, it is faster to make, since you have such a short resting time. To go with an aromatic soup, I added lots of chopped garlic to the bread dough and the result is fantastic. Read More

Fougasse, stuffed or plain: New how-to video

Thanks for being patient with my roasted red pepper obsession.  Above, dropping the scorched peppers into a bowl to steam (see last week’s post on roasting your own peppers).  But now the embarrassing part:  I shot the video on a different day from pepper-roasting time, so I stuffed the fougasse with with tomato and cheese.  So it’s really fougasse in the pizza margherita style.  But you get the picture, or at least, the video:

New video’s coming (on how to get steam into your oven); but we’re two weeks from manuscript deadline, so here’s a Roasted Red Pepper Fougasse…

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… …and I’m having trouble finding time to finish editing the video.  Zoe and I have two more busy weeks of last-minute editing for our pizza and flatbread book (which will be out in October of 2011).  I’ll get the new video up here as soon as possible (on how to get steam into your oven), but meanwhile here’s a re-print of an old post– on roasted red pepper fougasse– a gorgeous stuffed flatbread from France, which looks ahead to next year when we’ll be talking about flatbread all the time. Read More

Roasted Red Pepper Fougasse

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When interviewers ask me for my favorite bread from the book, I always give the same answer–it’s this gorgeous roasted red pepper fougasse (foo-gass)– a stuffed flatbread originating in the south of France.  It may be because of where I first ate it (perfect fall day, after a bike ride with my wife).  The rustic colors and flavors of Southern France burst out of this flatbread– carmelization of peppers highlighted by thyme, olive oil, and salt.  It’s festive, but so easy to bake from stored dough.  Read More