One dough: two twists, a wreath and a demented frog

Having bought a huge bag of red onions at Costco to make Kathy's Asiago-Onion Bread, I had to use up these pungent bulbs, right? No sense in letting them go to waste. So after French onion soup, onion omelet, and so forth, I decided to go all out for onion bread. For the dough I turned to Nancy Silverton's Italian Ring Bread in her book, Breads from La Brea Bakery as I had already used that recipe for fougasse last summer and I remembered loving it. Try it! You'll see. It is soft, smooth and flexible and incredibly forgiving. So much so that even though I had dimpled the foccacia all over and it was weighed down by onions and goat chesse, half of it sprang back up in the oven like the throbbing throat of a demented frog... And best of all, this dough is so versatile, the same batch can yield very different breads:

Onion Twist

Goat-cheese Onion Foccacia

Poppy-seed Wreath

Please note that this is a two-day dough and that there is no onion in the wreath. Ingredients: For the sponge 254 g cool water (70F/21C) 57 g mature white starter 227 g unbleached all-purpose flour For the final dough 556 g cold water (55F/13C) 5 g instant dry yeast the whole sponge 1136 g unbleached all-purpose flour 25 g salt 54 g extra-virgin olive oil Other 3 big onions, peeled, sliced and cooked in two spoonfuls of olive oil until caramelized 40 g important parmesan cheese, freshly grated 60 g fresh goat cheese (if desired, for the foccacia) Poppy seeds for the wreath (optional) extra-virgin olive oil (for brushing) Freshly ground black pepper (optional)

Method:

1. The day before baking, make a sponge by placing water, white starter and flour in a mixing bowl and stirring with a spatula
2. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let the dough ferment overnight at room temperature
3. The day of the baking, place water and yeast in the bowl of a mixer. Uncover the sponge and add it to the yeast mixture, along with the flour
4. Mix the dough on low speed for 4 minutes
5. Cover the dough with a proofing cloth and allow it to rest in the bowl about 20 minutes (autolyse)
6. Add the salt and continue mixing on medium speed for 4 minutes, scraping the dough down the sides of the bowl as necessary with a rubber spatula
7. Add the olive oil and mix on medium speed until incorporated and desired dough temperature (74-78 F/23-26C) is reached
8. Remove the dough from the mixing bowl. It should feel soft and resilient. Mix it for a few minutes by hand on a lightly floured work surface
9. Place in oiled bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap and let ferment at room temperature until doubled in volume, about 3 hours (mine fermented for one hour at room temperature last night then it went into the fridge overnight)
10. Preheat the oven to 450F/232C one hour before baking
11. Uncover the dough and turn it onto a lightly floured surface
12. Stretch it lightly into a rectangle, dust it with flour and divide it into four equal pieces (each of mine weighed around 570 g)
13. Pre-shape as 4 balls and let rest, covered, for about 20 minutes
14. Shape as 4 balls and let proof for 40 minutes, covered
15. To make the twists, flatten two of the balls into rectangles with a rolling pin, snip 2 inch-strips on the long sides of the rectangles, spread the cooled onions in the middle, dust with parmesan cheese (if desired, use some freshly ground black pepper as well)
16. Fold the strips onto the middle, forming a braided pattern
17. Brush with olive oil and bake for 35 minutes (with steam the first ten minutes). Check at half-time to make sure the loaves are not browning too quickly. If you feel that's the case, tent some foil over them
18. While the onion twists are baking, uncover one of the two remaining balls, flatten it lightly and using your elbow as a cutter, make a hole in the middle. Widen the hole with your fingers and gently set the crown to rest, covered, on a semolina-dusted piece of parchment paper
19. Take the last ball, flatten it gently with your hands, dimple it all around, brush with olive oil, dimple again and spread with caramelized onions and crumbled goat cheese (add freshly ground pepper if desired)
20. Set the foccacia to continue proofing, covered, next to the crown until the twists come out of the oven
21. When the oven is ready, lightly spray the wreath with water, then dust it with poppy seeds and snip with scissors all around to form the design
22. Bake the wreath and the focaccia at 450F/232C for 35 minutes, with steam the first 10 minutes. Check after 15 minutes to make sure neither of them is browning too fast (you may want to tent some foil over the focaccia at one point to prevent the onions from becoming too dark. I didn't do it and I should have)
23. Rotate if necessary to ensure even baking
24. Let cool on a wire rack before eating

I can't slice the wreath open as I am giving it to a friend, so I won't know what its crumb is like but isn't the difference between the crumb of the twist and that of the foccacia rather striking? Same dough, different handling and shaping and very very different results.

Twist crumb Foccacia crumb

But then, it's a good thing, isn't? If not, the onion/parmesan filling would have ended up in our lap!

All these breads go to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastpotting.

Kathy's Asiago & Onion Bread

This sinfully delicious bread is one that Kathy from Empty Nest Bakery brings to the Hillsborough Farmers' Market every week as her customers never seem to have enough of it. I made it yesterday afternoon, using her formula. Since I had started late, it was close to bed time when it came out of the oven but the fragrance was such that the Man kept circling the cooling loaves and if it hadn't still been too hot for comfort, I believe he would sneaked one under his pillow against a late night snack attack. As it is, he will have it for breakfast and it will be a treat! The proportions are based on one loaf weighing 560g before baking. I multiplied them by three and each of my loaves weighed about 555 g before baking and an average of 550g after.

Ingredients: For the dough 226g unbleached bread flour (I used all-purpose) 90 g mature starter (hydration rate: 80%) 153g water (counting the water present in the starter, the bread hydration rate is 70%) 5.52 g salt 41g grated Asiago cheese 28g onions, peeled, sliced and slowly caramelized in olive oil (either in the oven or on the stovetop) 11g garlic olive oil 5.5 g chives, rinsed, drained and chopped For the topping 30g onions, peeled, sliced and slowly caramelized in olive oil 7g roasted garlic (I didn't have any garlic so I used garlic powder) 50g Asiago cheese, grated (or 30g Mozzarella and 20g Asiago) (I used Asiago plus the fresh goat cheese I had left over from the Nuke-the-Zuke Quick Bread) Method:

1. Put flour, 90% of the water and starter in the bowl of the mixer and mix until just incorporated
2. Let rest, covered, for 30 minutes (autolyse)
3. Add the salt and mix on low speed for 5 minutes or until gluten is developed to improved mix (when taking a piece of dough in wet hands and stretching it gently in all directions, you should be able to see translucent and opaque areas and the dough doesn't tear readily, adding the rest of the water as necessary to get a medium soft consistency
4. Slowly incorporate the garlic oil, then the cheese, onion and chives
5. Transfer dough to oiled bucket and cover tightly (it should be tacky and soft)
6. Let ferment at warmish room temperature for 2 to 3 hours (or until the dough, when poked, keeps the imprint of your finger)
7. Turn the dough out on a slightly oiled surface and pre-shape as a boule
8. Let it rest 20 minutes
9. Shape as a tight boule and let it proof on a piece of parchment paper (dusted with semolina flour or corn meal) under plastic sheet for 1 hour at warmish room temperature
10. Turn on the oven to 450F/232C taking care to put an empty metal pan on the lower shelf
11. When the boule is ready, massage it with olive oil, dimpling it with your fingers
12. Spread the topping on it
    
13. Score in a circle all around the topping (Oops! I actually forgot that step!)
    
14. Pour a cup of cold water into the empty metal pan and slide the boule directly on the baking stone
15. Spray the oven generously with cold water
16. Bake for 25 minutes, check the loaf, if necessary tent a piece of foil over the top to prevent burning
17. Bake 5 to 10 minutes longer for a total of 35 minutes
18. Let cool on a wire rack and use a lot of self-restraint not to tear into it before it is cold!

And here is one of the loaves I baked yesterday using Kathy's formula:

My loaf isn't quite as pretty as Kathy's since I forgot the scoring which creates a nice "frame" for the topping. Also the crust seems a bit thinner to me and the crumb a bit tighter. That may be because:

• My starter was not quite mature enough. I had fed it the afternoon before leaving for the night but it got very cold in the house (it was in the low 50's when I came back the following day) and the starter looked quite dormant. I put it in front of a space heater to wake it up and waited about 3 hours before mixing but still, it might have used a little bit more fermentation time.
• As mentioned before, I didn't use the same flour as Kathy. I am curious to see what will happen when I use a stronger (more gluten-rich) flour.

So next time, I'll go for half bread flour and half all-purpose flour and the next time still, all bread flour. And then of course I'll try again with various percentages of white whole wheat flour. I'll report back, so stay tuned! The formula is definitely a keeper whichever flour is used. Thank you, Kathy, for sharing it!