focaccia - first try

My friend Josephine was having a get-together at her place so I volunteered to make focaccia. I also just bought some herbs (thyme, rosemary and sage) to grow on the balcony so I figured it was time to use some. I bought the Bread Bible before I moved back home but the comments on the web seems mixed, so I also found a 'no-knead' recipe online. The BB recipe calls for A LOT of water and the dough would 'look like melted mozzarella'. I followed the recipe (but I don't have the same brand of flour and yeast) and added more flour at the end, according to her blog. The resulting bread looks okay but is a little bit tough and not as airy as I'd hoped. The interior was a bit 'wet', and further baking doesn't really improve it. The one thing that I am not sure of is that in the beating procedure in the begining, she said that it would form a ball, but my dough is not quite there yet. However, on her blog, several people said it is impossible for form shapes. I guess without pictures, it is hard to describe..




The other recipe doesn't require a mixer and is easier. While it requires minimal mixing, the dough forms readily and shapes well. The resulting product is also more airy and looks better (although I added less oil in the end and I am not sure if that is why). The one thing that I am not happy with for both batches was that I bought some coarse sea salt but when I opened the package, the 'coarse' sea salt was way coarse... with grain size around 3mm... I didn't have a grinder on hand, nor a mortar and pestle. So there were big chunks of salting pockets... Will have to buy a grinder for it...