A Tale of Two Focaccia

A mysterious benefactor who got ahold of my mom's credit card recently supplied Piepan Labs with a shiny Kitchen-Aid stand mixer (in Pistachio, which makes it look like it was transported here straight from the 50s). When it arrived at the house I took it out of the box and cradled it in bed for a little while, and then immediately started making bread. Anybody who read the account of my initial attempt at making ciabatta knows that there are some breads that my dainty, uncalloused hands are unable (or unwilling) to create properly due to the sheer amount of mixing required to develop the gluten. The lack of height in that ciabatta has been in the back of my mind for the past few weeks, and I've been itching to try it again. So I did, and the result was better, but still not where I want it to be. I will share it with you all when I make a loaf I'm really happy with.

But the main thing is that this new bread-mixing robot allows me to make focaccia. It's another bread that gets a really long, thorough mixing, which it can handle because it's got a lot more water in it than most doughs. The water keeps the gluten from breaking down, which is what happens to most doughs when you mix them this long. It looks like a big wet mess for most of the mixing, and then suddenly near the end it develops very long, incredibly elastic gluten strands that help it trap in the gasses produced by the yeast. And it will develop a lot of gasses because it's got a four-hour initial rise. It's a bit of a wait, but that's what gives it that ridiculous texture. It's soft and chewy on the inside and rich and crisp on the outside.

Here's what you'll need:

390 grams (2 3/4 cups) all-purpose flour
442 grams (2 cups minus 2 Tbsp) water, room temperature (between 70 and 90 degrees)
3/8 tsp instant yeast
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp sugar
2 Tbsp chopped fresh rosemary

That's it! If you've got a mixer it's so easy to make.

Let's get to the titular two focaccia. I clumsily stumbled upon an illustrative example of how different flours can affect a bread. My go-to flour has been Hudson Cream unbleached all-purpose flour, produced in Lawrence, Kansas, which I tried once on a whim and has always performed well for me when working with yeast breads. I can't find it everywhere, but if you live in the Kansas City area, Price Chopper and Sun Fresh both carry it. So when I was running low on all-purpose flour (from obsessively making this recipe), I picked up a bag of Pillsbury, since Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible (from which this recipe comes) recommends only three flours for all recipes in the book: King Arthur, Gold Medal, and Pillsbury. I made two loaves that night, one with the rest of the Hudson Cream flour and the other with the Pillsbury. The difference was pronounced, so I thought I'd recreate the experiment for you.

What's the difference between the two flours? Hudson Cream proudly proclaims on their bag that they use a short patent milling process. What does that mean? Patent milling is a type of process that, these days, is reserved for professional-grade flours where consistency is key. Patent flour is ground more and sifted with finer sieves. It's generally of a better quality, as it is made mostly from the center of the wheat endosperm, which is where most of the protein is. Protein is what helps in gluten development. The grades of patent flours are extra short (or fancy) patent, first patent, short patent, medium patent, and long patent. The classifications indicate how much they were sifted, and therefore how much of the flour is "straight flour" (only endosperm) and how much is milled germ and bran. Extra short has the lowest amount of straight flour, around 50-60%. Long patent has the highest, around 90-95%. Short patent, which is what Hudson Cream all purpose flour is, generally contains between 70-80% straight flour.

In addition to this, Hudson Mill is a small, independent wheat mill, which probably helps with consistency. It's made only from hard Kansas wheat (hard wheat contains more protein than soft wheat, 15% to 10% as an average). Huge commercial mills (like Pillsbury) pull wheat from all over the place, often using a combination of hard and soft wheat, which makes it difficult for them to lay claim to a specific protein content. Higher quality commercial flours, like King Arthur, work hard to have a consistent protein content, making them trusted by home and professional bakers alike. For more on the different grades of flour, check out this handy page.

Ok, let's get to the main event. I measured everything by weight, not by volume, to control any variables in density between the two flours. I even made sure the water was exactly the same temperature in both loaves. The only difference between the two is the quality of flour.

First off, I put the flour and yeast in the mixer and turned the mixer on the lowest speed. This is just to distribute the yeast evenly.

Then I added the water slowly.

I let it mix on the second lowest speed for a couple of minutes to get everything combined. Then I cranked the mixer up to 4 and let it do it's thing. Beranbaum says it should take about twenty minutes to develop the exceptionally long strands of gluten so that the focaccia will poof up properly in the oven. The first loaf I made was the Hudson Cream loaf. Here's the dough after five minutes:

Pretty goopy, right?

But the gluten strands are already starting to develop, as you can see here.

Ok, so check it out after ten minutes of mixing:

You can see in the first shot how long those gluten strands are getting. And in the second one you can see that it's just about to start pulling away from the side of the bowl, which means we're getting close to being done mixing, even though we're only halfway through Berenbaum's recommended mixing time.

And here we are after fifteen minutes:

It came together super quick. I didn't even see it happen. This is what you want. A wet, cohesive mass that has pulled away from the sides of the bowl. At this point I added the salt and sugar slowly and beat for another minute to incorporate it fully.

That's sexy as hell, right? Work that gluten, girl.

The next step is to let it rise for about four fucking hours, I guess. You can go for a run or sit and think about all the shit you'll be doing with your focaccia. It'll be more or less than four hours depending on the temperature and humidity of your kitchen. Put it in an oiled bowl with plenty of space to grow in, since it'll be doubling in size.

I covered it with plastic wrap, and since my kitchen was a little cooler, I put the bowl in a cold oven with the oven light on, which gives it a nice, stable "room temperature" to rise at. Just don't forget it's in there and then preheat the oven, because I'll laugh at you.

Once I had the first dough rising, I started the second loaf, the one made with Pillsbury all-purpose flour. It was the same process all around, so let me show you how it shaped up over time.

After five minutes, it's still a big, smooshy mess. That's not gluten strands, it's just the path of the beater through the dough.

 After ten minutes, still a big smooshy mess.

After fifteen minutes: okay, it looks like maybe we're starting to get somewhere!

Oh, nope! Never mind.

Twenty minutes: YES! That's definitely something. Probably it'll be ready any minute now.

Twenty-five minutes: Ok, definitely probably in a minute it'll be done.

Thirty minutes: FUCKING COME ON ALREADY

Thirty-five minutes: Ok thanks, jerk.

Right, so, same deal: I put it in an oiled bowl, and let it rise for four hours.

Once the Hudson Cream dough had risen, I got a baking sheet out, lined it with parchment paper, and drizzled some olive oil on it. The first time I made this bread I didn't put parchment paper on the baking sheet, and the focaccia stuck to the pan, and I cried. If you're using parchment paper you don't really need the olive oil, except that you absolutely need the olive oil because it soaks into the bread as it bakes and makes the bottom of the loaf rich and amazing.

Here's what the Hudson Cream dough looked like after its rise:

It's twice it's beginning size, and has those gorgeous bubbles in it, which will expand during baking and give it an amazing texture. Using an oiled spatula, I carefully scraped the dough onto the baking sheet, trying to avoid breaking any of the gas bubbles.

Then I let it rest for another hour, which helps build up more gasses in the dough and lets it spread out a little bit on the pan.

See? This is it after the hour's rest. About twenty minutes before this, I preheated the oven. Then I chopped the rosemary, and sprinkled it, the salt and the olive oil over the top of the dough.

Then I popped it in the oven. Fifteen or so minutes later, when the top was golden brown and I was losing my shit from excitement, I took it out of the oven.

Not bad, eh? I was pretty happy with it. But there was still one more loaf to make, and then the all-important comparison, and then the even more all-important eating of all of it very quickly.

The Pillsbury dough rose just about as well as the Hudson Cream dough. The difference in rising seemed small enough that you wouldn't be able to tell in a picture, so I'll spare you more photos of raw dough. But ha ha just kidding, here's one more picture of the raw second loaf just before going in the oven:

And after:

Thumbs up, right? Both of them look pretty good. They both ended up about the same diameter, but the Hudson Cream one puffed up a bit more in the oven. Let's look inside them, shall we? Here's the Hudson Cream loaf:

And the Pillsbury loaf:

The texture of the Hudson Cream loaf was a lot better (and the flavor, too, somehow, though I'm not sure how to translate why that is into flour-speak). The bottom of the Pillsbury loaf was a little gooier, not as solid. And of course there's that beautiful poof at the top of the Hudson Cream loaf. They both tasted great, of course, but the Hudson Cream one was the clear winner. I hadn't thought too much about flour before this, but I've done a lot of research because of this experience, so now I know maybe one or two things about flour, and I can string them together in sentences that make vague sense, which is nice. The more I learn about how baking works, the more I enjoy it.

Now I'm not saying that you should be using short patent flour for everything. The reason there are about a bazillion types of flour is that they all do different things and serve various purposes. Short patent flour is great for making yeast breads, but I have no qualms about using Pillsbury or whatever in cakes and cookies and what not. Mostly I just wanted to illustrate how fucking weird baking is sometimes, almost like alchemy for those without a degree in science, and how choosing the bag of flour on the left instead of the bag of flour on the right can result in a very different result.