Sourdough focaccia with baby bell peppers, garlic, basil🌾 Airy, soft, with such a creamy aroma🥰 It's a great variant of bread dough where you can play with hydration👌
Don't forget to use strong flour and do a nice mixing before adding extra water to the dough, it's very important, cause it's much easier to develop strong gluten in more stiff dough, rather than to save by mixing too liquid dough that is falling apart. Less water in the beginning of mixing, all extras such as water, olive oil, butter - at the very end👌
The recipe:
🔸250 g of strong bread flour
The amount of flour you take for the dough always goes as 100%, all other ingredients we count basing on your amount of flour.
🔸90% of water - 225g
🔸25% of sourdough starter - 62g
🔸2,5% salt - 6g
🔸6% light olive oil - 15g - for the dough during mixing
🔸0,5 g of instant dry yeast (1/4 of a tea spoon) for 250g of flour
🔸 baby bell peppers
🔸 fresh garlic slices
🔸 fresh basil leaves
🔸 salt flakes
Dough handling:
Mixing the dough in a stand mixer at the 2nd speed for at least 15 min. Don't take all recipe water all at once, take 190-200g at first, then during mixing you can add step by step the rest of recipe water. Mix for 15 minutes, then add olive oil at the very end and mix for 3 min more.
Proofing 2h at 25-26° C (78° F), performing coil folds every 20-30 min. Then we put the dough into an oiled pan, stretch the dough a little bit and let it rest covered for 30 min. After the rest we add some good olive oil on top of the dough, deep in fingers through out the whole surface of the dough, add slices of baby bell peppers, garlic slices, fresh basil leaves (can be added before baking or after), and let it rest covered for 30 min more. You can also add a little bit of salt flakes on top of the dough.
Then we bake our focaccia, put the pan with the dough on the baking stone that was preheated during 30 min at the oven's max temperature. If you don't have a baking stone, just put the pan on the rack in your oven. Bake focaccia for 15-20 min at 230 °C (445 °F) until it has a beautiful golden color.
