It’s that time again:  another entry in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Group (BBA), which is baking its way through The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread.  This time, it’s focaccia, and we had a choice to make it with a poolish, or to simply retard the dough in the refrigerator overnight.  I chose the former.

Reinhart also provides a recipe for a flavorful herb oil that I used to drench the focaccia, and topped it with some more chopped fresh rosemary and parmigiano reggiano.

The results?  Outstanding.  I’m convinced that it was the almost two cups of olive oil that went into this.  I loved it and so did my husband.  It was good fresh, cold, toasted, you name it.  The one thing I’d change in the future is to eliminate the salt in the herb oil – just too salty for me.

You can see what everyone is making this week at our Flickr group, on Twitter (#BBA), or check out the challenge page. This recipe also appears on Google Books.  To see what others have been baking this week in the way of breads, be sure to check out YeastSpotting!

Boris, my rye sourdough starter, had an affair. Well, about 2 cups of him did. When he thought I wasn’t looking, he had a fling with some King Arthur Unbleached Flour, instead of staying true to rye. A tale as old as time. The flour always looks better on the other side of the fence, doesn’t it, Boris?

I took Boris’ offspring and made a rosemary olive oil loaf out of it. I mean, really, what else could I do? When I told Master Chow what had happened, he shrugged and made a turkey swiss panini out of it. A calm and sensible man is Master Chow.

This dough came together remarkably easy, and was soft, smooth, and silky. In fact, the dough was so lovely that I almost didn’t want to bake it. Almost. Heh, heh.

In this step, I mixed in the rosemary (I wouldn’t use more than the recipe lists – in my opinion, the flavor balance was perfect):

Here I took its temperature. Eighty degrees F – on the nose!:

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