Tony made me my favorite weekend breakfast – I am calling it that since I’ve had it two Sundays in a row – huevos rancheros.  He even used my chipotle queso Laughing Cow cheese!  Thanks honey 😀

I think everyone should start the day out spicy 😀

Over the weekend I picked up a few cookbooks from the library.  One is Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home Cookbook.  Good thing my library had it because it retails for $50!

It has a ton of family friendly recipes like my buttermilk fried chicken – but pretty sure I won’t be making the duck confit!   One of the other books was called My Bread.  It’s another no-knead (think Artisan Bread in 5) but one recipe that jumped out to both me and Tony was the focaccia bread.  Tony remembers eating it in Italy all the time.

When I started to read the recipe I was like “what??!!”  You apparently cook potatoes and once tender, you puree them and add that startchy liquid to the bread batter.   I had never heard of that before.

I then strained the mixture into the flour mixture, sure enough two tiny potatoes didn’t get pureed so I salt and peppered them and ate them 😀

I diverged from the original recipe because I am a firm believer that you don’t need bread flour to make great bread.  Good old all-purpose flour is just fine.  It also called for Yukon gold potatoes, I used two red potatoes.  And the original recipe called for 1/4 cup of olive oil, which I reduced to two tablespoons.

Rosemary Focaccia Bread (printer friendly version here)

Makes 16 servings (165 calories, 2.1 fat, 31.7 carbs, 1.6 fiber and 4.4 protein)

Ingredients

2 red potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 1/2 cups water
4 1/2 cups bread flour
2 1/2 teaspoons yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon rosemary

Directions

  1. Peel and cut the potatoes in quarters. Add the water and cook until potatoes are tender – about 15 minutes.
  2. Meanwhile, mix together the flour, yeast, sugar and half the salt in a large bowl.
  3. Using a stick blender, puree the potato mixture. Let it cool slightly (to 120 degrees) and add to flour mixture.
  4. You will have a very sticky and wet dough – I was skeptical, but it turned out fine.
  5. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rest for 2 hours.
  6. Put parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Dump dough on counter and add just enough flour to manage the dough without it sticking to your hands – between 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup.
  7. Put on parchment paper and using a rolling pin, roll into desired shape. Pour 1 tablespoon of olive oil all over the dough. Using your finger, push dimples all over the dough. Add the second tablespoon of olive oil and repeat, making sure the olive oil gets the sides of the dough too.
  8. Sprinkle with rosemary and sea salt. Let sit for 45 more minutes.
  9. Heat oven to 400. Bake for 30 minutes, until the top is evenly golden brown.
Here it is right before going into the oven.
exactly 30 minutes later you’ll be rewarded with perfection in a bread 😀

the crust was crisp, yet the inside was tender – when I gave a piece to Hannah her remarks were “this one is a keeper!”

Since we ate breakfast kind of late, I had half a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.

with rosemary deli ham – so good!

Because I knew I was going to be having surf and turf for dinner – I thawed two filets from the beef tenderloin I got last week, Tony cooked me up some spicy shrimp and I over-grilled zucchini on the side, but it was still good!

Hope everyone had a great weekend – and try making the focaccia!  Let me know when you do 😀