Paul Hollywoods Focaccia

If you have been glued to the Great British bake off as I have, you will have seen Paul Hollywood's focaccia made. I love bread, especially Italian bread and when I've made it before, it's been the typical dough you would make for most bread. According to Mr Hollywood, this is not how an authentic focaccia is made, so I decided to take the challenge.
The photo really doesn't do justice to this fantastic recipe. It took three tries to make it, mainly because I didn't realise I had the wrong type of yeast! It is a very messy and sticky dough due to the large amount of water added and takes a bit of practice and any sort of scraper to help handle this difficult dough!

Once you have mastered it though you will make it again and again. It is a perfect bread for accompanying a meal or even to have on its own, with maybe a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip it in. I'm now going to try adding olives and sun dried tomatoes to add other flavour dimensions but it is still amazing with simply salt and rosemary as I've added to mine.

The recipe can be found here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/focaccia_08389

The Great British Bake Off book is excellent too so here it is if you fancy an early Christmas present!

Great British Bake Off: How to Bake: The Perfect Victoria Sponge and Other Baking Secrets (Great British Bake Off TV Tie)

Good luck!

First play with my new Christmas toy

I got a very lovely ravioli maker for Christmas and hadn't actually made any with it yet, so I dug it out of the cupboard this week in an attempt to make pea and mint ravioli. As usual, I took the fly by the seat of my pants attitude to a recipe and had a crack at just making it up myself and it worked....sort of.



I used a basic pasta dough recipe from Jamie Oliver's Italy. The end result was nice but the filling wasn't thick enough and I eventually had to put an egg into it so at least when the pasta was cooked, the filling wasn't runny. I didn't want to blitz cooked garden peas so I blended still frozen ones meaning that they eventually thawed and made the filling distinctly sloppy......stupid!

It also took much fiddling around with the pasta maker and the ravioli tray until I really got the hang of turning out a presentable set of ravioli. 



I won't share the recipe for the filling just yet as it needs to be perfected but you can see what the ravioli turn out like when using the tray. Getting one of these ravioli trays is really worth it, as when you get the hang of it you will never have a burst rav again.