Heads up! After the first two risings the dough then needs to rest for 24-36 HOURS!
since the dough gets divided into thirds….does anyone know if you can divide and freeze some of it? seems like a lot of foccacia to me (mostly because I want to make sure I don’t eat it all myself)
I was thinking about freezing two portions of the dough for the same reason as you, although I think the recipe says that you can freeze the baked foccacia and reheat it.
I didn’t read it that carefully. If I can freeze bread after its baked, I’ll do that
I freeze bread quite regularly & it seems to do just fine.
i cut the recipe in half, it still makes more than needed for 2 but enough that we can use it in a day or two
I ended up baking 3 ‘loaves’ and freezing the other two.
During a weekend of unusual focus and organization, I did both February recipes. The one thing I wish I’d paid more attention to with the focaccia recipe is that it requires a 24- to 36-hour cool rise. That kind of blew my dinner plans for Sunday night! The boca negra seems to have turned out fine, although my plan is to freeze it and thaw it to serve later in February. I found that the sugar syrup wasn’t quite enough to melt all of the chocolate for the cake, so I put it over a double boiler to finish melting the chocolate and then incorporate the butter.
Thank you for pointing out the long cool rise. I almost made the same mistake, but your post saved me.
I skimmed through the recipe and saw first rise, second rise…it looked like a normal bread dough. I must have glaze over the 24-36 hour cool rise.
Thank you!!
i cut the rise time to about 18 hours and got a nice result
I’m super disappointed in my Kitchenaid Artisan mixer. It could not handle the dough for the focaccia at all and got a really hot smell and made terrible noises only 2 minutes into mixing and I only had it set on 2 even though the directions said to turn it to “high” (I was too scared to do this). I’m going to be calling them tomorrow as it is only 3 years old and since I sell them I don’t feel like I have complete confidence in the product anymore. Grrrr. I ended up hand kneading for the last 8 minutes and I found the dough really easy to work with. I’m really excited about this bread even though I’m mad at Candy (my mixer) right now.
The Baking with Julia white bread recipe destroyed my KitchenAid, even though I only had the speed on 2. The inner gears shredded. My husband tried to replace a few parts, but couldn’t get the machine to fit back together properly, no matter how many times he took it apart and started over. Online investigation revealed that the company will say you are not supposed to raise the speed higher than 1 for bread, and that if you did, it’s your fault that the machine broke. Mine was well past its warranty period at the time, so I never actually contacted them about it myself. I got a new KA Artisan mixer for Christmas. The first thing I did was make the whole wheat bread from BwJ, very careful not to raise the speed higher than 1. It smelled like the motor was working too hard. I’ve decided not to mix bread dough in it any more. It’s not worth the cost of a new machine to me. Please let me know what you hear from them, because I’ve had the same problem!
I killed my original kitchen-aid making bagels several years ago. I sent it to the factory to be repaired, but it wasn’t repairable. I ended up buying a professional model (the biggest capacity) from them ‘refurbished.’ I’ve been using it without problems for at least 4 years. I don’t recall what the discount was, but it was much cheaper to buy it from them directly than to use my 20% at Bed Bath and Beyond. I’m thrilled with it.
Our Kitchenaid rep is supposed to call me today so we’ll see what she has to say.
What a shame- the KA is supposed to handle bread dough beautifully! As I make large quantities with up to 12 cups of flour- I invested in a Bosch & I love it!
i have had the same professional model for 22 years. it no longer has first gear but can still mix bread-i used it yesterday on #4 for the focaccia. my only complaint, it is not heavy enough to keep from moving on the counter-i had to stand there and make sure it didn’t rock off the countertop.
The brioche dough – that had to go forever in the stand mixer (ten minutes or so) – seemed to be tough on everyone’s KA. I made mine in the Cuisinart food processor, had no issues with the long knead time and a great finished product. Did the white bread in the processor, too. Not sure if I’m just lucky, or if it has to to with the single action of the processor (dough blade just spins around) versus the more complicated movement of the KA dough hook?
So sorry that I am clogging up the board with this but I just got off the phone with our Kitchenaid rep and the news isn’t great. She was incredibly nice and helpful and everything but the bottom line is that the Artisan mixer is not made for this kind of work. She said we were all correct to not go above 2 for the mixing speed but that it’s really meant to only knead dough for about 2 minutes. Anything over that is extremely taxing on the machine and it’s not really made for it. She said that anyone who has a broken or damaged Kitchenaid no matter the age should call the consumer service number because the machines can be serviced by Kitchenaid – basically you send it in and they diagnose whether it can be fixed or whether you just need to scrap it. She said the diagnostic is free and then they call you to let you know how much it will cost before they fix it. I think she said they even send you a box to send the machine back in. To be honest I was really hoping she would offer me a free mixer :) but alas that didn’t happen. I guess I’m going to have to explore getting the big mama 600 Professional series.
the big mama 600 is wonderful. talk to them about getting a refurbished model. contact me thru my blog if you want to discuss further! good luck!
Also look at the 7 quart kitchen aid. It is designed for small and large batch batters. You can whisk 2 or 24 egg whites. Our KA rep recommends the 600 for large batch cooking. I upgraded to the 7 quart after testing it for work and I love it. I made the focaccia dough, keeping the machine on speed 1 and the motor head wasn’t even warm. A great machine. And it’s very fast, egg whites whip up in half the time.
I have the KA 6 Professional – never had a heat problem. I have had an issue where there was a bit of grease dripping down the stem. Anyone else have/had this issue? It does not seem to work well with small batches – good to know about the 7 for future reference.
a big one that’s also good for small batches? that would be a dream. there’s a lot of stuff I do by hand because it would get lost in the big bowl of the 600. I wasn’t aware that there was a 7 quart
I love love love my BOSCH mixer…it can mix a brick:)
I don’t have a mixer. I was planning on mixing by hand with a wooden spoon…any suggestions?
eventually you’ll just have to knead it….for a long time
Did anyone find that this did not rise as high in the oven as you’d hoped? The outer edge was nice and puffy, so i Kind of wish i hadn’t done the tick tac toe slashing before baking and just made some dimples with my fingers instead.
Me too steph… everything was going fine till I shaped it and put in the oven.. it came out crisp on the outside, not too high and chewy.. tasted good but not how i expected it would turn out!!!! cant figure out what i did wrong!
yes….but it was still delicious.
Mine was very similar, although I did love the taste! I think maybe I was too rough while shaping it and eliminated a lot of the air bubbles?
Agreed! I lost all my bubbles following the steps with the razor blade. Wish I would have just baked it as it was!
Mine didn’t turn out exactly right either. I’ve never slashed focaccia, only dimpled it. Next time, I dimple.
Tuesdays with Dorie 
Heads up! After the first two risings the dough then needs to rest for 24-36 HOURS!
since the dough gets divided into thirds….does anyone know if you can divide and freeze some of it? seems like a lot of foccacia to me (mostly because I want to make sure I don’t eat it all myself)
I was thinking about freezing two portions of the dough for the same reason as you, although I think the recipe says that you can freeze the baked foccacia and reheat it.
I didn’t read it that carefully. If I can freeze bread after its baked, I’ll do that
I freeze bread quite regularly & it seems to do just fine.
i cut the recipe in half, it still makes more than needed for 2 but enough that we can use it in a day or two
I ended up baking 3 ‘loaves’ and freezing the other two.
During a weekend of unusual focus and organization, I did both February recipes. The one thing I wish I’d paid more attention to with the focaccia recipe is that it requires a 24- to 36-hour cool rise. That kind of blew my dinner plans for Sunday night! The boca negra seems to have turned out fine, although my plan is to freeze it and thaw it to serve later in February. I found that the sugar syrup wasn’t quite enough to melt all of the chocolate for the cake, so I put it over a double boiler to finish melting the chocolate and then incorporate the butter.
Thank you for pointing out the long cool rise. I almost made the same mistake, but your post saved me.
I skimmed through the recipe and saw first rise, second rise…it looked like a normal bread dough. I must have glaze over the 24-36 hour cool rise.
Thank you!!
i cut the rise time to about 18 hours and got a nice result
I’m super disappointed in my Kitchenaid Artisan mixer. It could not handle the dough for the focaccia at all and got a really hot smell and made terrible noises only 2 minutes into mixing and I only had it set on 2 even though the directions said to turn it to “high” (I was too scared to do this). I’m going to be calling them tomorrow as it is only 3 years old and since I sell them I don’t feel like I have complete confidence in the product anymore. Grrrr. I ended up hand kneading for the last 8 minutes and I found the dough really easy to work with. I’m really excited about this bread even though I’m mad at Candy (my mixer) right now.
The Baking with Julia white bread recipe destroyed my KitchenAid, even though I only had the speed on 2. The inner gears shredded. My husband tried to replace a few parts, but couldn’t get the machine to fit back together properly, no matter how many times he took it apart and started over. Online investigation revealed that the company will say you are not supposed to raise the speed higher than 1 for bread, and that if you did, it’s your fault that the machine broke. Mine was well past its warranty period at the time, so I never actually contacted them about it myself. I got a new KA Artisan mixer for Christmas. The first thing I did was make the whole wheat bread from BwJ, very careful not to raise the speed higher than 1. It smelled like the motor was working too hard. I’ve decided not to mix bread dough in it any more. It’s not worth the cost of a new machine to me. Please let me know what you hear from them, because I’ve had the same problem!
I killed my original kitchen-aid making bagels several years ago. I sent it to the factory to be repaired, but it wasn’t repairable. I ended up buying a professional model (the biggest capacity) from them ‘refurbished.’ I’ve been using it without problems for at least 4 years. I don’t recall what the discount was, but it was much cheaper to buy it from them directly than to use my 20% at Bed Bath and Beyond. I’m thrilled with it.
Our Kitchenaid rep is supposed to call me today so we’ll see what she has to say.
What a shame- the KA is supposed to handle bread dough beautifully! As I make large quantities with up to 12 cups of flour- I invested in a Bosch & I love it!
i have had the same professional model for 22 years. it no longer has first gear but can still mix bread-i used it yesterday on #4 for the focaccia. my only complaint, it is not heavy enough to keep from moving on the counter-i had to stand there and make sure it didn’t rock off the countertop.
The brioche dough – that had to go forever in the stand mixer (ten minutes or so) – seemed to be tough on everyone’s KA. I made mine in the Cuisinart food processor, had no issues with the long knead time and a great finished product. Did the white bread in the processor, too. Not sure if I’m just lucky, or if it has to to with the single action of the processor (dough blade just spins around) versus the more complicated movement of the KA dough hook?
So sorry that I am clogging up the board with this but I just got off the phone with our Kitchenaid rep and the news isn’t great. She was incredibly nice and helpful and everything but the bottom line is that the Artisan mixer is not made for this kind of work. She said we were all correct to not go above 2 for the mixing speed but that it’s really meant to only knead dough for about 2 minutes. Anything over that is extremely taxing on the machine and it’s not really made for it. She said that anyone who has a broken or damaged Kitchenaid no matter the age should call the consumer service number because the machines can be serviced by Kitchenaid – basically you send it in and they diagnose whether it can be fixed or whether you just need to scrap it. She said the diagnostic is free and then they call you to let you know how much it will cost before they fix it. I think she said they even send you a box to send the machine back in. To be honest I was really hoping she would offer me a free mixer :) but alas that didn’t happen. I guess I’m going to have to explore getting the big mama 600 Professional series.
the big mama 600 is wonderful. talk to them about getting a refurbished model. contact me thru my blog if you want to discuss further! good luck!
Also look at the 7 quart kitchen aid. It is designed for small and large batch batters. You can whisk 2 or 24 egg whites. Our KA rep recommends the 600 for large batch cooking. I upgraded to the 7 quart after testing it for work and I love it. I made the focaccia dough, keeping the machine on speed 1 and the motor head wasn’t even warm. A great machine. And it’s very fast, egg whites whip up in half the time.
I have the KA 6 Professional – never had a heat problem. I have had an issue where there was a bit of grease dripping down the stem. Anyone else have/had this issue? It does not seem to work well with small batches – good to know about the 7 for future reference.
a big one that’s also good for small batches? that would be a dream. there’s a lot of stuff I do by hand because it would get lost in the big bowl of the 600. I wasn’t aware that there was a 7 quart
I love love love my BOSCH mixer…it can mix a brick:)
I don’t have a mixer. I was planning on mixing by hand with a wooden spoon…any suggestions?
eventually you’ll just have to knead it….for a long time
Did anyone find that this did not rise as high in the oven as you’d hoped? The outer edge was nice and puffy, so i Kind of wish i hadn’t done the tick tac toe slashing before baking and just made some dimples with my fingers instead.
Me too steph… everything was going fine till I shaped it and put in the oven.. it came out crisp on the outside, not too high and chewy.. tasted good but not how i expected it would turn out!!!! cant figure out what i did wrong!
yes….but it was still delicious.
Mine was very similar, although I did love the taste! I think maybe I was too rough while shaping it and eliminated a lot of the air bubbles?
Agreed! I lost all my bubbles following the steps with the razor blade. Wish I would have just baked it as it was!
Mine didn’t turn out exactly right either. I’ve never slashed focaccia, only dimpled it. Next time, I dimple.
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