Foccacia

I've been wanting to make foccacia bread for a long time so last night I went and bought ready made dough. I sort read the directions, which is why the foccacia turned out looking pretty bad. I didn't take a photo of it because all I want to do it to forget about it. Let me tell you, it was horrible. The shape was horrible. Certain areas of the bread were raw. Yup. Raw: as in not cooked. It didn't taste bad; it was kind of good so we ate it. Okay, let's see where it went wrong. Instead of following the direction on the bag I followed Jamie Oliver's direction for "homemade dough." I think that's the first thing that went wrong. I let it rise, but it didn't seem to rise so I took it out of the bowl and started beating it. Emmm, you're supposed to beat bread so that the air comes out of it. Okay, that part was fine. I started rolling it out, but it was a little hard so I added some flour....I think that's where it went wrong. I started kneading it....that's where it went horrible wrong. I could no longer get it to go flat; it kept wanting to ball up. So I had to pretend that it was a pizza...I tried tossing it...that only works with dough that hasn't gone wrong. So anyway, I started to just pull it apart...luckily I was able to pull it apart enough for it to have some sort of stickiness underneath...that's when I had it back on the baking pan. I was able to stretch it out about 12 inches across and 9 inches high. I tried rolling it so that it the dough would even out, but the rolling didn't work. So I ended up with a mountainous landscape type dough (did I mention that at this time I also added some dry basil, which only stayed at one part of the bread. haha). Well, I guess I was supposed to let it rise again, but I just threw some salt, parmesan cheese, and extra virgin olive oil on top and threw it in the oven. (I poked holes in the bread in several areas so that the olive oil could stay put and cook in the oven...well, I think that was the purpose).

Next time I'll take a photo even if it's bad looking. =)

p.s the BEST foccacia bread is served at The Karta Bar on Thayer St. I think that they USED to serve them for free, but I didn't see them last time.They're really good though.