hi there my name is Alec tunnel and I'm a gluten-free and paleo chef and this is an episode of simply paleo with me today we're gonna be learning how to make paleo focaccia bread and focaccia bread is the type of bread that is frequently in more Italian cultures you go to an Italian restaurant that a lot of times it's what they serve in the beginning it's just almost like a pizza crust that's pretty thick and has been seasoned with all types of herbs and spices and then sliced into bread portions and it's delicious and it's a perfect vehicle to soak up olive oil and balsamic vinegar and any other type of dip fit you have in mind so we're gonna be making focaccia bread today but we're gonna be making it the Paleo way which means no grain at all so let's get started so I like to use a KitchenAid mixer because it does a lot of a mixing work for me but you can definitely use a large bowl if it's your preference so we have our large bowl here and we're gonna be putting in all the dry ingredients and mixing them so they get incorporated and then separately we're gonna do the liquid mixture and the liquid ingredients and then we're gonna pour the liquid into the dry and mix it up so that it becomes a batter or dough for the pizza or foot talked about so in this bowl I have one and a half cups of cassava flour now for those of you that are new to the paleo lifestyle cassava flour is a flower that is grain free it's actually made from the cassava root some of you may be familiar with tapioca starch tapioca starch is actually the starch that's been extracted from the cassava root so cassava flour is the whole root that's made into a flour and it's perfect a perfect flour vehicle to make a lot of things most things you have to mix it with other types of alternative flours to get the right consistency but if you're making things like tortillas it's perfect on itself so we have a cup and a half cassava flour and then we have a cup of arrowroot starch which is also made from the arrowroot a root vegetable and so we're going to mix both of those in here and then we've got a couple of other dry ingredients in here I have one teaspoon of sea salt I typically use fine sea salt when I'm putting it into things and if I'm sprinkling something on top I might use more of a coarse Himalayan type so in here I have a teaspoon of fine sea salt and a teaspoon of cracked dried rosemary now rosemary is very easy to find in a dried form but it can be a little bit off-putting if you get a whole bit of it so a lot of times what I'll do is I'll take the rosemary and I'll put it in a mortar and pestle and I'll crush it a little bit not into a total powder but just enough so that they're not large chunks or large sort of Spears you can also do it in the palm of your hand just by crushing them with your fingers whatever works so got a teaspoon of that and then we've got a teaspoon of onion powder and today I mix it up a little bit there's a wonderful spice store called Penn ZZZ and their local toss in Connecticut but they also have a fantastic website in catalog and they're really good quality spices and spice blends and they're not exorbitant ly expensive and they have granulated air-dried shallots which are a little bit sweeter in this form than the typical onion powder but just the savoury also so I use the teaspoon of the shallot powder which you can also interchange it with onion powder and so what I'm gonna do is take those three ingredients and mix it into my dry mix and then I'm going to take the bowl and put it in the kitchen a sauce or stand and turn it on just to get everything incorporated but if you have a large bowl and a spatula that's fine too you can just we need to refine this in and we're just mixing it up so that all the ingredients are mixed well before we put our liquid ingredients right nice and mixed so now I want to do the liquid mixture so in this measuring cup I have a cup of water which ideally is filtered water or some type and then I have half a cup of extra-virgin olive oil that I've already mixed in here now in addition to this I want to add two eggs and then what I'm going to do is whisk this separately because I don't want to put all the individual ingredients into the dry batter I want to really make sure it's already mixed not to say that it doesn't work the other way but this definitely creates more of a consistent batter which is what you want so that when you're eating it it has more of a consistent texture okay so what we're going to do is we're going to whisk up the two eggs the 1/2 a cup of extra virgin olive oil and the cup of water until it's consistent and incorporate as well and what I'm going to do now is I'm going to take this and I'm gonna pour it into my dry mix and then as they start to get incorporated we'll go to the yep now if you're doing it in a bowl mix it up and pull it to blue now if you're using the KitchenAid mixer partway through what you want to do is scrape it down because sometimes there's bits of the dry mix that's stuck on to the paddle and kind of cover it up by selling the batter so it's helpful to scrape it down or you can just turn it off and just mix it some more with a spatula by hand so we're gonna just use the mixer now this batter is not a typical pizza dough batter in the sense that it's a little bit stickier than what someone would be used to with a more you know gluttonous pizza batter so we're just gonna take this off and I'll show you the consistency now wall-eyed before I did this I preheated the oven to 425 and while I preheated it I actually took the baking sheet or the half baking sheet that I was using and I put it in the oven before I turned it on and then I preheated the oven with a baking sheet inside and the idea is to try to get the baking sheet to be really hot so that the pizza crust can get a little crispy on the bottom it's kind of like using a pizza stone and you can certainly do this on a pizza stone just make sure you're using parchment paper because as I said this does get a little sticky so let's show you this batter we're gonna bring it closer to the video and you can see that it's a sticky batter but it's not wet it's not liquidy now what we're gonna do is we need to roll it out you can put it on to use oil or wet fingers to spread it out but what we're gonna do is we're gonna put another piece of parchment paper over it and we're gonna just use a rolling pin now it's a little bit of a awkward process sometimes because the parchment paper can get a little mobile so first we want to just get the batter onto the parchment paper so I have to pretty bit the equal size sheets of parchment paper before I put the baking sheet in the oven i measured the parchment paper to make sure that it was the right size okay all right so now we've got this ball of dough and I could use wet oils fingers to spread it out into the shape that I want but instead I'm going to I'm just trying to get all this good stuff off there we go I'm gonna just take another sheet of parchment paper my finger wants achacha to be the focaccia dough to be a little bit more thicker than a typical pizza crust just gonna take my rolling pin and I'm just going to gently create a smoother consistency okay and try to give it the shape that I want which is somewhat rectangular I'm not being a perfectionist here but I'm gonna try to get it to be the shape of the baking sheet essentially you don't have to worry about having extra crust because the whole thing is across right that's the idea and if you get a little bit that comes off the parchment paper it's not a big deal we can fix it after okay so now we've got the parchment paper that's spread over and everything's rolled out - the next step is to get is to get the hot baking sheet so wait right here here's the parchment paper then you can get it to be a little bit smoother you can spread down the side that might have been rolled up too far away either way is fine but just be careful because that baking sheet is a little bit hot right and I'm just gonna spread it out now if you have a little bowl of water or oil you can wet your fingers or wet your spatula which is a good way to do it too and that's it and now what we're gonna do is take the remaining teaspoon of crushed rosemary that's been dried and also a half a teaspoon of more coarse sea salt or if all you have is fine that's fine too but I have the Himalayan coarse sea salt and I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna sprinkle it on top and this is what gives it that incredibly flavorful taste it's all that salt on top it's so good for you the sea salt has so many wonderful minerals and then you really don't have to worry about the sodium issue because when you're eating sea salt there's such a balance of minerals and sodium is not the overpowering mineral in the mix and then you've got the rosemary that's so flavorful and there you go and now what we're gonna do is we're gonna take this and we're gonna put it in the oven so I'm gonna do that after we talk because I made focaccia bread beforehand rosemary and salt it's so fragrant so we are going to cut it into slices and see what it tastes like so let's see it just came out of the oven and you can see how it's slightly thick and let's see here all right you can see how it's thick and it's got the wonderful seasoning on top and it is so fragrant mmm so delicious it's crispy on all the surfaces and inside it's a little bit of that doughy delicious soft warm texture did you take a bite you get some of that Himalayan sea salt for the rosemary which is so so wonderfully flavorful in your mouth and then of course you get some of that onion powder flavor with a rosemary inside it's so delicious mm-hmm really yummy this is a perfect accompaniment to so many different meals so good my kids were very excited to hear that I was doing focaccia bread for the video today because of course that means we're having two layers of focaccia bread was our dinner they were very excited because it's so delicious and if you make it in advance you can just put it in the oven to heat on 325 350 and just heat it up again they'll get a little crispy on the outside but it'll get nice and warm again on the inside and then just cover it up until you're ready to serve and you can slice it in any way that you want Pizza wedges squares anything so I'm glad you watched I hope you make this recipe at home it's pretty simple recipe everything goes into the bowl and then you lay out left the dome we're gonna get this delicious focaccia bread and as always I'd love to hear from you and you wish list you have any cravings and questions you can check me out on my blog at wwlp.com and I hope to hear from you and stay tuned for more episodes of simply paleo and you can see lots of wonderful recipes and cooking demonstration videos on my blog as well so take care .
Video Description:
Welcome to Simply Paleo with Ayelet Connell PhD! During this episode, watch Ayelet demonstrate how to make Paleo Rosemary Focaccia bread. For more episodes of Simply Paleo, visit www.SimplyPaleo.com.
