Fougasse is a bread traditionally associated with the Provence region of France, and it's a cousin to the Italian focaccia. Both breads are descended from a Roman bread that was baked directly on the hearth, which in Latin is called 'focus.' The Roman bread was called panis focacius, so it's easy to see the relationships, etymologically speaking. Apparently, fougasse was traditionally used to gauge the hearth temperature, which was determined based on how long it took to bake. Leave it to the French to make a very tasty bread out of a tester loaf.

This is definitely a bread that benefits from a baking or pizza stone in your oven. It needs that immediate heat from the hearth/stone to get proper oven spring. It's also a pretty wet dough, so you can expect it to be very sticky and it'll require a fold halfway through the fermentation. The only thing I changed from the original recipe was that I used kalamata olives rather than the niçoise olives, which would be the more Provencal of the two. You could also add some herbes de Provence or some anchovies, as well as goat cheese and dried fruit.

If you really want to impress your friends and family, make some fougasse. I made this last week and the first loaf was gone within ten minutes of it being cool enough to eat. Check out the gallery below, and the recipe is after the jump.




This recipe comes from Jeffery Hammelman's Bread, a Bakers Book of Techniques and Recipes, and makes two 15 ounce loaves.

Preferment
4.3oz / 1c bread flour
2.8oz / 3/8C water
.09oz/ 1/2tsp salt
.002oz/ very small pinch of instant yeast (bread machine/rapid rise)
Mix all the ingredients into a dough, cover with plastic and leave in a cool (not refrigerated) spot for 12 to 16 hours.

Dough
11.3oz / 4.25C bread flour
1.7oz / 3/8C whole wheat flour
9oz / 1 1/8C water
.2oz / 1tsp salt
.05 / 1/2tap instant yeast
.9oz / 2Tb extra virgin olive oil
1.4oz / 1/4C kalamata or nicoise olives
all of the preferment

-Mix all of the ingredients into a developed dough, adding the olives only at the end. I prefer the olives to be in nice big chunks, but you can cut them up a bit also.
-Lightly oil a container and place the dough into that. Bulk ferment the dough for two hours, but fold it after one hour.
-Once the dough has fermented for two hours, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, divide in half (or scale into 15 ounce pieces). Lightly round the pieces, cover with plastic and let rest for twenty minutes.
-Flatten the rounds into ovals and cover. Let them proof for about an hour. Preheat your oven to 450°F, giving your baking stone plenty of time to heat up.
-Coat the back of a baking pan with semolina or corn meal. Place the loaves on the pan and stretch into a roughly triangular shape. Then use a pizza cutter, pastry wheel, or knife to cut the pattern into the dough. Slide the loaves onto the baking stone in your oven. Bake for 10-12 minutes, turn the loaves, and finish baking if they need more time (probably less than 10 minutes).