The minimalist snack focaccia

How hard can it be to make a mini-foccacia? Not too hard at all: it has only a cup of flour, with a bit of yeast salt, water and … And it solves a real problem: what else can I give a boy for his school mid-morning snack?

It was also a bit of a test. We have some lovely prostrate rosemary in our garden, and the leaves and flowers are just as edible as the normal rosemary, if not more so: they are softer and smaller. So no little chewy surprises in there for anyone.

This is the ideal snack for he-who-won’t-eat-cake or, for that matter, anything else that might get in the way of whatever sport he happens to want to play in his break between classes. It even lasts in the lunchbox (so it survived the soggy-bread test), and tastes so good he thought, maybe, it was pizza.

I don’t need school as an excuse. I could eat it anytime.

A quick and small foccacia with rosemary and salt

I hope everyone else who joins in Fiesta Friday Challenge #1 likes it too. Bread + rosemary seems to be a popular combination, so we can all enthuse over each others’ ideas. Thanks to Novice Gardener for hosting it.

• Servings: 2-4
• Time: 30 minutes plus rising time
• Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

• 1 cup of bakers flour
• 1 teaspoon of yeast
• ½ cup of tepid water (it should feel just warm to your little finger)
• ⅓ cup of rosemary flowers and leaves
• a really good pinch (or two) of salt

Directions

1. Mix the flour, yeast and water together. Knead well until the dough becomes smooth and elastic (see notes below). It takes 5 or 10 minutes.
2. Form the dough into a ball, put it in a ceramic bowl and cover it with a damp cloth (or even a plastic bag) and sit it somewhere warm until it has doubled in size. This takes a couple of hours in winter, and slightly less in summer.
3. Go and do something else for a while. The bread can look after itself.
4. Check the dough.  If it has risen as much as you want, take it out of the bowl and knead the salt and chopped rosemary into it.
5. Press the dough into the bottom of a well-oiled round cake tin, then cover that and put it back into that warm place to let the dough rise again. It might spread out a bit, but it won’t rise much, and you don’t want it to. Your minimalist foccacia is meant to be less than an inch thick.
6. Turn your oven on so it reaches 230 degrees C (475 F) by the time you are ready to bake it.
7. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the top is crispy golden.
8. Cut into quarters and serve.

Notes

Elastic means the dough stretches when you pull at it while you’re kneading it, and if you press your finger into it, the resulting dent will soon disappear as the dough springs back. Smooth means that the dough looks smooth, and it doesn’t stick to your hands any more.

To let the dough rise in winter: we find the best place is just inside a window where the sun can filter onto the bowl and warm everything nicely. In our hot summers, this could cook it, so anywhere out of the way is good enough.

Minimalist foccacia: a small foccacia with rosemary and salt