The coca de forner or baker's coca is a flat, elongated bread very typical in Catalonia that was originally made with unenriched bread dough, brushed with olive oil, adorned with pine nuts and sugar on top and sprinkled with anise when it came out of the oven. Simple and very effective.
These cocas were used when ovens were Moorish or rotating to settle and temper the oven, as well as to generate steam for the subsequent baking of the breads. The very high temperature left the coca very crispy on the outside and caramelized by the sugar, but tender inside due to the speed of baking.
All of the above is told much better than I can and from personal experience, which I don't have, Jordi Mercadé here. As he says, it is not known how the custom of dousing cocas with anise began, but we all agree it was a great invention.
So this is a very simple dough that contains all the wisdom of baking. Heaven, how corny I get, it must be the anise… Let's get to it.
INGREDIENTS
Preferment:
- 30 g strong flour
- 30 g water
- 1 g dry baker's yeast (3 g fresh yeast)
Coca dough:
- The preferment above
- 140 g strong flour
- 100 g regular supermarket wheat flour
- 20 g wheat semolina (optional)
- 1 g dry baker's yeast (3 g fresh yeast)
- 150 g water
- 1.3 g salt
- 20 g extra virgin olive oil
Finishing:
- Pine nuts to taste
- Sugar to taste
- A good splash of anise
METHOD
PREFERMENT
- Mix the preferment ingredients in a bowl, without kneading, the night before. Cover and leave at room temperature overnight. If you prepare the preferment in summer you will probably be fine with half that yeast.
- Also put the pine nuts you are going to use in a bowl with water. This is a tip from Xavier Barriga so they don't burn when baking the cocas.
COCA DOUGH
- Put all the ingredients except the preferment, the oil and the salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix at low speed, cover and let rest for 30 minutes of autolysis (this facilitates subsequent kneading).
- After the rest, add the preferment, the oil and the salt.
- Now begin kneading in cycles of 1–2 minutes followed by 10-minute rests, until you obtain a fine, elastic dough, which will be quite sticky, that's normal.
- Make a ball with the dough and put it in a greased container. Cover and let it double in volume.
- Turn the fermented dough out onto a well-floured work surface, fold lengthwise into three parts, like a letter, flatten very slightly with your fingers and transfer the dough to a piece of baking paper.
- Stretch it a little by sliding your fingers underneath until you form a coca about a finger thick.
- Cover and let it ferment again. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to at least 240°, even higher if your oven reaches it.
- When the coca has risen, brush generously with olive oil. Sprinkle the pine nuts first and then the sugar.
- Transfer the paper to an oven tray (the perforated ones are ideal for a quick and effective bake of the dough) and bake the coca 15 minutes without fan. Then lower the temperature to 200° and bake another 5 minutes to finish browning and drying the coca, better with convection fan.
- Fill a kitchen squeeze bottle with anise and generously spray the coca as it comes out of the oven. Let cool on a rack; it will be ready to eat quickly because being so thin it cools fast.
Well, there you have the recipe for baker's coca, so satisfying that you'll make it again and again. Word of a baker enthusiast.
Comments
Claudia said:
Hola Gema, no hace falta que pongas nada, a falta de la sémola de trigo. Un saludo!!
Claudia said:
Verdad que sí, Gloria? Por algo es un clásico, un saludo!
Gema said:
Me encanta esta coca! Una pregunta: si no tenemos sémola de trigo duro, ponemos la cantidad equivalente de harina normal o no ponemos nada?
Gloria Vázquez said:
Tan sencilla y tan rica, una de mis preferidas. Gracias