Fougasse with courgettes and olives recipe

Details

• Cuisine: French
• Recipe Type: Bread
• Difficulty: Medium
• Preparation Time: 30 mins
• Cooking Time: 10 mins
• Serves: 5

Step-by-step

1. In a small bowl, mix the yeast with 50g/1¾z of the flour and 50ml/1⅔fl oz/2¾ tbsp of the lukewarm water. Mix well, cover with clingfilm (plastic wrap) and leave in a warm place to ferment for around 20 minutes.
2. When the yeast mixture has started to expand and bubble, mix the rest of the flour in a large bowl with the rest of the water, olive oil and salt.
3. Add the yeast mixture to the rest of the dough. Mix thoroughly and knead for 5 minutes, stretching and folding the dough over itself.
4. Cover the bowl with clingfilm or a clean dish towel, and leave to prove in a warm place for around an hour to 90 minutes.
5. Tip the dough out of the bowl onto a lightly floured surface. Try not to knock it around and deflate it too much. Cut the dough into three pieces using a dough scraper, bench scraper or blunt knife.
6. Put the sliced courgettes in a bowl, lightly season with salt and drizzle with olive oil. Add the olives and oregano.
7. Take one piece of the dough, sprinkle over a third of the courgettes and olives, then fold the dough back over itself so that the ingredients are incorporated into the dough. Repeat with the other pieces, or feel free to flavour them with different ingredients for variety. Use your hands to pull the dough this way and that to shape the bread. You want them to be roughly 1cm/0.5in thick and roughly oval shaped. Fougasse looks best when one end is slightly squarer than the other, a bit like a leaf.
8. Preheat the oven as hot as it will go (250°C/475°F/gas mark 9 for most domestic ovens). If you have a baking stone, then use it, otherwise place a heavy black tray into the oven to preheat. This will mimic the hearth and will make for a nice crust.
9. Cover the dough with a slightly damp, clean dish towel and allow to prove for another 30 minutes, until slightly puffed up by around 1cm/0.5in.
10.  Dust a heavy baking tray (or two) lightly with semolina and transfer the pieces of dough to the tray. If you can’t fit all of them then either use a second tray or, as they don’t take long to cook, leave one to bake later.
11.  Using a dough scraper, bench scraper, palette knife or (yes!) credit card, cut the dough down the middle, all the way through to the work surface, but not all the way to the edge of the bread. At 45-degree angles, cut three smaller lateral cuts in a similar fashion, so that the cuts make a pattern like a sheaf of wheat or a leaf. Use your fingers to slightly stretch out the bread around the cuts and make the holes bigger.
12.  For a crispier crust, just before you bake the fougasse, spray the oven with a fine mist of water or put a small oven-proof container with a few ice cubes on the base of the oven.
13.  Put the fougasse onto the stone or tray in the hot oven and bake for 10–12 minutes or until golden brown. The courgettes should have roasted nicely inside and outside the bread. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before ripping into the fougasse, dunking pieces in your best olive oil.

This recipe is from Sardine: Simple seasonal Provençal cooking by Alex Jackson. Published by Pavilion Books. Photography by Matt Russell.