Fougasse with dates and pistachios

I really like making bread at home, but the truth is that, being practical as I am, I tend to look for recipes that are not very complicated since bread can take a lot of time.

The recipe that Eva from Bake-Street brings us today fits perfectly with the type of recipes that I like: with a step-by-step that is very easy to follow, with ingredients that you will easily find and a result that, apart from being delicious, will surprise people at home.

Eating freshly baked bread is one of the greatest pleasures I know, and if it's homemade, even better.

I know that for many of you this may seem like one of those preparations that can put you off a bit, and even more so if we talk about the use of pre-ferments, which in the end is much less than it seems and fits in wonderfully with our pace of life.

But it is also true that there is a wide variety of breads made with commercial yeast that, if we do not abuse it, can give us very tender and spongy breads with an exceptional result.

Today I will show you how to make a traditional variety of bread from French gastronomy closely associated with Provence, the fougasse. Originally, bakers made them to know the temperature of their wood-fired oven and then they became their lunch.

A very easy bread to make, in just 3 hours we can have it ready and enjoy it to accompany a good appetizer, an unexpected meal or surprise our family/guests with its attractive leaf appearance.

As we are soon approaching the holidays when we like to make more elaborate preparations with more special ingredients, I thought of a combination that never fails: dates and pistachios. Of course, if any of you prefer other ones, there is no problem in varying them or even omitting them.
And to present them, there's nothing better than this beautiful basket along with the baguette board on which we can put a wide variety of cheeses, patés, jams, fruits... Everything we like the most because bread goes well with everything ;)

Kitchen Craft Wire Basket and Baguette Board MasterClass

INGREDIENTS (for 4 medium fougasse)

• 455 g of baking wheat flour (I used extra flour with W=180)
• 4 g dry yeast / 12 g fresh yeast
• 9 g of salt
• 295 g of water
• 30 g olive oil
• 2 large dates, Medjoul type
• 15-20 g of shelled pistachios weighed
• semolina and/or flour for sprinkling (optional)

ELABORATION

1. In a large bowl, add the wheat flour together with the water, mix with the help of a silicone spatula or your hands until both ingredients are integrated.
2. We cover it with a cotton cloth and let it autolyse (a process by which the flour is hydrated and the subsequent kneading time is reduced) for 20 minutes.
3. While we chop the dates, we remove the shells from the pistachios and lightly pass them through the mortar to crush them a little without making crumbs out of them.
4. After this time, remove the dough from the bowl and transfer it to a clean work surface without any flour. Add the yeast and mix. Add the salt and mix again.
5. We work the dough using hard kneading (or traditional kneading, as you can see in the post "Bread, basic concepts and techniques" ) until we have more or less developed our gluten network.
6. To do this, we must perform the membrane test. We take a small portion of dough, either a piece or by slightly lifting a fold of the dough, and gently stretch it between the tips of our fingers. When our dough has developed well, without reaching 100%, we will be able to stretch it without breaking, creating a thin film.
7. If the dough cracks when performing this step, we should let it rest for a few minutes, always covered to prevent it from drying out, and then continue kneading for another couple of minutes.
8. We knead for 2 minutes and let it rest for 4-5 minutes.
9. Once the dough is developed, add the oil. We should not add it before developing the gluten mesh, otherwise it would be more difficult to do so and we might not achieve the best result.
10. When we pour the oil over the dough, it will spread all over the surface and even the table where we are working. It is okay, we knead it trying to get all the oil as we work the dough.
11. Once it is fully integrated, we will add the chopped dates together with the pistachios lightly crushed in a mortar. We should not do this before because it will make it difficult to develop the gluten mesh and once we are carrying out this step, we should not knead too much with the added ingredients so as not to damage it.
12. We will form our dough into balls, trying to apply tension. To do this, we will use the edges of our hands, inserting them into the base of the dough and gently pushing it from one side to the other. We press and remove it with a quick, dry movement, in this way we will prevent it from sticking to our hands.
13. We grease a bowl or Tupperware and put our dough inside, cover and let it rest for 45 minutes.
14. “If you use a mixer (like a Kitchen Aid), you should add the ingredients in the same order as I have specified for doing it manually. We will use the hook and the kneading time will be slightly shorter than if we do it manually.”
15. After this time, we fold our dough: we take one end of the dough and fold it over itself, we turn the tupperware 180º and we take that end and fold it over itself again. Now we turn the tupperware 90º and repeat the operation, we finish by turning the tupperware 180º and making the last fold.
16. We let it rest for 30 minutes. After this rest, we repeat the same operation two more times, in total there will be 3 folds every 30 minutes.
17. Preheat the oven to 240ºC with heat from above and below. This should be done 30 minutes before placing the bread in the oven.
18. If you use a baking stone or steel plate, you should place it in the oven after preheating.
19. Once the last rest has finished, we will form our fougasse.
20. We prepare our shovel/board or surface that we will use to transport the fougasse into the oven.
21. If we use a baking stone, we will only need to sprinkle the shovel/board with a little flour and/or semolina. If we use a steel plate or a normal baking tray, we will place a sheet of baking paper on the shovel/board and sprinkle with a little flour and/or semolina.
22. We divide the dough into 4 pieces of the same size, approximately 200 g each.
23. Carefully stretch the dough using your hands to make it into a triangular shape, approximately 15 cm long. Use a steel scraper or sharp knife to make the cuts.
24. We will make a central cut, this will be the longest of all without reaching the final ends of the dough.
25. Then we will make 3 more cuts on each side, slightly inclined.
26. Using your fingers, open the cuts you have made and finish shaping your fougasse. If the dough sticks to your hands, sprinkle them with flour or semolina.
27. Sprinkle lightly with flour and/or semolina, cover with a cotton cloth and let rest for 15-25 minutes, depending on the temperature. You should see that they have increased in volume and the surface is swollen.

When there are 4 minutes left to bake, we will heat a little water, half a cup, in the microwave to create steam in the oven.

We will have to generate steam in the initial minutes, to do this we can do it in 2 ways:

• Placing a metal tray with volcanic rocks under the baking tray, pouring boiling water into it. In this case, the tray will be placed on the base of the oven, although if it is a small container, it can be placed on one side of the stone/tray, always leaving space for the bread. (Caution: not all ovens allow us to place trays on their base. See the instruction manual)

• Placing a baking tray on top, placing it over our bread, where we will pour the boiling water (it is the most practical).

The tray that we place inside to pour the water should always be introduced 10 minutes before baking our bread.
Once everything is ready, we put our bread in the oven on the lowest part. We will bake the fougasses two at a time.
We slide the bread using the spatula/board onto the stone/grid… we pour the water onto the upper or lower tray and close the door.

We bake for 5 minutes with steam at 240ºC. After this time we remove the upper/lower tray (where we pour the water) and close the door.

We lower the temperature to 230ºC and leave it for another 10-12 minutes. It will have a light golden color on the surface.
We take it out and let it cool on a rack .

Storage: This bread is ideal to eat warm or on the same day it is baked. As it is made with yeast and is quite narrow, it has a shorter shelf life.