Pizza vs Foccacia

2 weekends ago, I tried making some pizzas. Recipe for the crust seemed easy enough and my brother even made some self-made kimchi as topping. The dough wasn't as sticky as I thought it would be and the crust turned out to be very crispy. All in all, my brothers and I had fun making and eating the pizzas...

So, thinking that bread-making would also be as easy-peasy, I made grand plans to make some foccacia bread on the following weekend. I was especially inspired by another blogger, Petunia and her very delicious-looking picture of her grape-with-rosemarry foccacia.

But my first bread-making experience turned out to be a scary one!

It started all good on the Saturday morning, until I really couldn't figure out the recipe as provided by Petunia. The proportions were in "cups" and after translating the measurement to "ML", it still seemed rather strange to me. So, I last minute googled another recipe which I thought look rather simple and easy to understand.

Following the recipe, I mixed the dry and wet ingredients together to get a REALLY sticky dough. In fact, it was sooooo sticky that I freaked out a little, and ended up adding more flour. But, it was still very sticky! After 5 mins of trying to knead the dough, I gave up and dumped the sticky dough to my KitchenAid. I used the dough hook instead to knead the dough.

So while my KitchenAid was kneading the dough, I was clearing up the huge, sticky mess that the dough had made on my table top. I had pieces of sticky dough all over and, I tell you... these sticky bits refused to be washed down the sink! I had to use boiling hot water to dissolve the bits.

After almost 8 minutes, my KitchenAid started making weird noises and I peeped into my mixing bowl. Woah, the sticky dough just got STICKIER!!! Argh...... so, I freaked out once again and added more olive oil. By now, I doubt I was following the recipe anymore...

I stopped the KitchenAid (in case the sticky dough spoil my prized KitchenAid mixer), and decided to knead by hand all over again. So, I kneaded and I kneaded and I kneaded, but the sticky dough simply refused to yield... and it continued to be as sticky as ever, so I added more and more flour... until a "smooth, elastic dough that stretches" was finally formed.

By then, my table top was all messy again. Argh...

Anyway, I could finally start proofing the dough. I put the sticky dough into an oiled bowl and cover the bowl with cling wrap. The recipe indicated 1-2 hrs of proofing until double in size.

So while the dough was proofing, I rushed down to RDA to fulfill my volunteer duties. 2.5 hrs later, I was back and yup, the dough was double in size by then.

I transferred the dough to a square baking tin and let it proofed for another 1 hour or so. Ok, by then my guests would start appearing any moment, so I just had to send it to the oven. A quick dressing of sea salt, cherry tomatoes and thyme leaves from my dying thyme, and in the oven, it went.

25 minutes later, I presented: the Foccacia bread. It was edible, thankfully. Despite of all the additional olive oil, flour and more flour! The bread did not rise as much as I would like, but... at least it did rise!

After this experience, I think I'll just buy a foccacia bread from my Delifrance! Pizzas are definitely easier!

p/s: Thanks E for taking such beautiful pictures of the bread. ;)