Chops' Fig, Stilton & parma ham focaccia

A baking recipe from a baking master...

A couple of weeks back I spent a day cooking with my pal Chris Taylor (no relation)… aka T Bone Chops. Mostly we just did it for fun, took a few snaps, drank a few Paloma’s, a little wine, its good for us fire cooks to spend time hanging out in the quieter winter season. But its also good to learn new stuff, see how other people cook. I love learning, and I am a pretty average baker who really likes to eat good bread. Chris who wrote a BBQ baking book last year with DJBBQ (Backyard Baking, find it right HERE) and is infinitely more skilled in the area than me. I mean, just look at the size of the box of dough he presented me with??? MASSIVE.

So, my first lesson - Chris starts his dough with a ‘poolish’ - an entirely new word to me, I kinda like it. Its a yeasted pre ferment, made from a 50:50 flour to water mix and a way to get that yeast working in a wetter environment than the dough would be, adding more complex flavours to your finished bread. And homemade bread is all about flavour right? You take flour, water, yeast and turn it into something way more complex than the sum of its parts. Magic.

We made many breads with Chris’s massive tub of dough, but the recipe is scaled back to make one big one…

To begin - and good bread takes time, so start this the day before you want to eat - make your poolish

For the poolish you will need:

250g (9oz) strong white bread flour

250g (9oz) water

2g dried yeast

25g ripe sourdough starter 

All you need to do is mix together the flour, water and yeast in a bowl, cover and let it sit at room temperature for 3 hours.

Then, after 3 hours, you head on to make the dough proper

For the focaccia mix you will need:

500g (1lb 2oz) strong white bread flour

280g (9¾fl oz) water

All of the Poolish pre ferment from the first step

3g dried yeast

50g (1¾oz) extra virgin olive oil

20g (¾oz) salt

Vegetable oil, for greasing

In a stand mixer, place the flour, water and the pre ferment / poolish. Mix until it comes together and then let it sit for 20 minutes to rehydrate the flour. Add the yeast, oil and salt and mix on medium/ fast speed until the dough comes away from the sides and slaps the side of the bowl, this should take about 5-7 minutes. You can also knead by hand, in which case I would knead for a couple of minutes, then rest for 10, then knead then rest again, then knead a final time.

Then place the dough in an oiled Tupperware, cover and sit on the worktop for 3 hours. Every 30 minutes lift the dough and fold once or twice, like folding a letter, before placing back in the box and recovering.

After 3 hours, place in the fridge overnight. This long cool ferment will really work on those flavours, developing a complex tasing dough.

The next day….

Remove the dough from the fridge, its should be good and bubbly now.

Liberally grease a skillet with olive oil and give the dough one more fold and lift gently into the skillet, pushing it out so it fills the pan.

Then you want to prove it again for another 1-2 hours. You could prove on the worktop, loosely covered, or you could do what we did - prove it on a warm steamy environment, like in a YETI cooler that we poured boiling water into. This will just help the rise. And bread is all about the rise, right?

Get your toppings ready and light your wood oven…

For ours, we used:

a few slices parma ham, torn into pieces

a handful of dried figs, chopped

about 150g Stilton, crumbled into pieces

and a lot of extra virgin olive oil

You could add or take anyway anything - sun-dried tomatoes, olives, little snippets of garlic or anchovies or both, woody herbs like rosemary, sage or thyme. Whatever floats your boat.

And we fired the Gozney Dome to around 300 Celsius, you could also bake in an oven inside, just get it as hot as it will go (in my fan oven thats 250C). It may take a fraction longer than ours did.

After the second prove, when the dough is light and fluffy, make big divets with your greasy fingers, top with dried figs, blue cheese and Parma ham along with plenty more oil. Make sure you use decent extra virgin, the oil is such a big part of focaccia.

Slide into the hot oven at around 300C (but no flame, no live fire, just residual heat) and bake for about 25-30 minutes. Done!

If you make it, or a version of it, inside or out, let us know! We’d love to see you pics and hear what you think.

Big love,

GT x