Fougasses are flat breads made with an olive oil dough from the south of France; we love seeing them stacked up in the Provencal markets and boulangeries ready to take away. They come in different shapes palm leaves, wheat ears or ladders but however they are shaped, they just taste great!
Ingredients
- 1 lb 2 oz 4 cups (500 g) strong white flour
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 10 g ¼ oz 1½ tsp fine sea salt
- 5 g ⅛ oz 1¼ tsp fast acting yeast
- 10 fl oz 1¼ cups (300 ml) room temp-erature water
- 1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
- 1 heaped tbsp chopped fresh sage
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 200 g 7 oz bacon lardons
- 5 oz 1½ cups (150 g) grated Gruyere or Cheddar cheese
- Salt and pepper
How to Make It
- In a large bowl, mix the flour, the 3 tbsp olive oil, salt and yeast together with the water until it all comes together. Turn on to a clean work surface and knead the dough until it is smooth and springy.
- Put the dough back in to a clean bowl, cover and leave to rise for 1½ hours until well-risen and puffy.
- While the dough is rising, you can cook the onion. Mix the finely chopped onion with the sage and the 2 tbsp olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper. Put this mixture in a small heavy frying pan and cook it gently in the oven until the onion is soft and golden, stirring the mixture from time to time. This will take about 10 minutes. When it’s done, put the sage and onion into a bowl to cool down.
- Put the bacon lardons in a clean frying pan in the oven until cooked through and starting to crisp up. You don’t need to add any oil to them as the bacon fat will come out while they are cooking. Add them to the onion mixture and mix together.
- When the dough has risen, turn it on to the work surface again and flatten it out. Add the cooled onion and bacon mixture and knead it into the dough.
- Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces and shape into balls. Cover with lightly oiled clingfilm and leave the dough balls to rise again for 30 minutes.
- When they have risen back up again, roll the dough balls out to ovals about 25 cm/10” long and about 12.5 cm/5” wide.
- Sprinkle the grated cheese over half of each one and then fold the non-cheesy half on top of the cheesy half. Use your finger-tips to press down into the dough joining the top to the bottom.
- Leave the pieces of dough to rest again under lightly oiled clingfilm for another 10 minutes and then roll them out on a lightly floured surface to get a half oval shape again about 20 cm/10” long.
- Use a blunt knife or a dough scraper to cut through the dough to make 7 slits in each piece, each about 7.5 cm/3” long, fanning around from one side to the other. You still want 4 pieces of dough, each with 7 slits in it so make sure you don’t cut through the edges.
- Brush the top of each fougasse with a little extra olive oil and put them, one at a time, on to a well-floured peel. Put the fougasses on to the clean oven floor (at 3 Mississippi) and cover the entrance with the door so that it’s just ajar.
- Cook for 8-10 minutes until the flat-breads are golden brown and cooked through. Take them out of the oven and cool on a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature, ripped into pieces – they are great for serving with cheese, soup or just dunking into some more good olive oil with some dukkah or seeds.