Failing at Focaccia (and Life)

After watching MasterChef for hours, I had an overwhelming urge to eat tasty food. Our fridge was infested with ‘healthy’ (read tasteless) snacks and I craved for ‘heavenly’ junk. To soothe my taste buds (and to end my streak of non-motivation), I decided to tackle ‘Focaccia Bread’ – a monster in disguise. (If you don’t know what it is, don’t worry. I didn’t know either till 2 days ago.)

My prior cooking experience was limited to pre-made pasta, maggi and chai, but seeing 8 year olds bake up a storm (and hearing Ramsay shouting at everyone for their incompetence) made me think I could make a dish that I couldn’t pronounce. (Okay, it’s not really that hard….I’m just incompetent)

Like all professional chefs, I turned to my archive of cookbooks to find the recipe – Google. My mother’s favourite cooking blog, Yummy Tummy Aarthi, popped up and the quest of making my own bread from scratch was underway.

The ingredients were simple enough – flour, sugar, salt, pasta seasoning, olive oil and yeast. We even had yeast. We had ordered it over 4 months ago, and they were just about to go bad. See, I was meant to bake this bread.

“Take the yeast and sugar and add this to the warm water..Mix well and let it sit for 5 mins..”

I can do that. I plopped a bunch of yeast in microwaved water, added sugar and continued watching my youtube video. (I can’t do anything without an unnecessary source of audio-visual input, okay? Give me a break.)

Take flour and salt in the mixing bowl and pour this yeast water over this..

Okay. I grabbed the jar of flour, dumped half of it into a seemingly clean bowl, and poured the yeast-mud into it. I grabbed a huge spoon, and started mixing the mixture like a cake-batter. Engrossed in my phone, lost track of time and probably stood there, stirring, for 15 minutes.

Form a smooth and soft dough out of this..Apply oil over this and set aside for a moment..

I do know how to knead dough- that’s one of the only life skills my 18 year old self has. My muscle-memory took over, and a beautiful piece of dough was rolled; while I gave all my conscious attention to the video.

Oil a tray or baking tin…Put this dough in that and press it till it spread out evenly..

Cover it with a damp cloth and set aside for 1 – 1 ½ hours or until the dough has rised..

Easy-peasy, I can do this. I took my dough away from the countertop, and it was really really sticky. I must have missed to add something! After a quick ‘cross-check’ of the recipe, I realised I overlooked adding oil. Oil. OIL. (How did I even knead dough without oil is beyond me.) I sprinkled olive oil over my dough, gave it a quick knead and placed it on the cake-baking tin. (That’s all I had, who keeps bread-loaf tins?)

Finally I could take a break, an hour long break. As i was snoozing in my room, my mom barged in and escorted me into a flee-infested kitchen. My dumb brain had forgotten to cover my flour-mixture with a damp cloth. The tea-towel, which I carefully prepared, lay beside the baking tin, and not on it. Anyways, my dough had risen (or so it seemed to my untrained eye) - and that’s all that matters.

Preheat the oven to 220°C(450°F)..

With your fingers make some impressions on the dough(see picture)..

Pour olive oil in that impressions…Top it with onions,olives,rosemary,cilantro…

I was not going to go through the ‘right way to give texture to focaccia bread’. I simply poked my fingers into the dough at various places and gave it a rugged look. It looked good. I wasn’t going to chop onions or go get olives for this dish, it wasn’t worth it. I defrosted frozen baby corn, added a variety of dried micro-herbs. (Anything drenched in basil looks good, doesn’t it?) Rosemary? Cilantro? Domino’s oregano and Chili flakes make a great substitute.

Put this in the oven and bake it for 20 mins..

Oven? Huh? What temperature? 220 degrees? Oh no, I was supposed to preheat the oven, wasn’t I? Nevermind, I just shoved the salt-drenched, oil-deprived mess in the oven and started baking. I had seen so many people make bread on TV, it would be fine, I could wing it.

I had taken a good amount of pictures of the unbaked focaccia and the pictures looked really good. Now, all I had to do was to wait.

 

After 20 mins, the focaccia-mess seemed as flat as earth (flat-earthers, where art thou?)  and the crust looked pale white instead off golden brown. It was severely undercooked, or so I thought. I re-baked if for another 5 minutes, then another 10 minutes and kept monitoring it for over 40 minutes. It had been in the oven for three times as long as it should have, and still looked raw. What was the bread’s problem? Why couldn’t it just rise and look pretty?

Over-baking made the toppings look charred. Focaccia looked sad.  

And the appearance was million times better than the taste. The ‘bread’ was rock-solid. Multiple rounds of re-heating, and any attempt to soften and salvage the focaccia failed. I don’t know where I messed up. I followed the recipe to a T.

I ‘ate’ four bites of it, and my family just looked at it and laughed. The only creatures who got the opportunity to taste a piece of my lovely creation were the unfortunate birds who came to our balcony.

My cooking seems to be a recipe for disaster.    

(A huge shout out to Yummy Tummy Aarthi. Check out her recipe of Focaccia (https://www.yummytummyaarthi.com/focaccia-bread-flavoured-wi/). It Will actually turn out a lot better than mine did.)