BB: Rosemary Foccacia Sheet, Page 205.

I have a confession to make..I bought Rose's Bread Bible since 2008 but I have not flipped over a single page! :p  It was in cold storage until now (same with the Pastry Bible!). Glori recently set up a bake through Bread Bible group for Alpha Bakers and now I get to dig it out from deep inside the cupboard and finally read my first recipe. LOL!   

So our first recipe to bake from Bread Bible is page 205, 

Rosemary Foccacia Sheet. 

I have recently cultivated sourdough and had been having fun using them and feeding them. They are my pets now.  Instead of discarding part of the sourdough during feeding, I decided to use it in place of the yeast mentioned in the book. I used 15% of the flour weight and then do the necessary adjustment for flour and water respectively. 

The dough was pretty wet and had to use paddle. Took 20mins to get stuck to the paddle like this. At first I was watching it then I grew tired and bored and walked away to chat with other alpha bakers on FB group. I heard some noises and ran to the kitchen and saw my mixer walking around the counter top on its own! Scary. Thankfully my mixer didn't walk off the counter top!  

After it is transferred to an oiled glass bowl for proofing.  

And I brought my son out - his usual routine - same shopping centre and McDonalds every week.

I came back 3 hrs later, it proofed ..over proofed..to 3x size! Yikes! 

Also due to weather being very hot & sunny that day too. 

I pour into a sheet pan and tried to push the sides around. I think somehow I only pushed the sides and not the centre..the centre no matter how i try to push it won't budge!  Then I planted rosemary leaves on the bread dough...literally... LOL! (..hahaha... I read wrongly....somehow I remembered the garlic part which was supposed to press it down but ended up pressing the stalks of rosemary leaves down instead cos I forgot about the garlic....LOL!)  After I poured some EVOO onto the top of the dough and into the oven it went.

The foccacia freshly out of the oven. 

Sorry..I couldn't help it..I nibbled on some! 

And I nibbled somemore........

And in the end..I nibbled all the crispy sides!!  

I cannot help it! It was so good fresh out of the oven!

Esp. the sides, so crispy and chewy at the same time.

I couldn't eat dinner that night...my stomach was so bloated with bread & water. 

These were the left over bread in the centre of the dough. 

Fluffier and thicker cos I couldn't seem to push them out.

This is a very delicious bread, fresh out of the oven is heavenly.

I couldn't stop eating it.  The next day the bread remained soft, but however, it turned a bit soggy due to the EVOO.  Still better eaten fresh imo.