Sesame Scallion Focaccia (v)
And a Bake Sale!
I wanted to send out this recipe today in part to get you excited about next weekend’s Community Bake Sale for Yu & Me Books at Archestratus! If you’re in the NYC area, come by Archestratus in Greenpoint between 2-6pm ( earlier is definitely better) and pick up some kind of amazing baked good from one of the 80 local bakers donating their skills. Some things I personally want to eat are the Black Sesame Rice Krispies, Sour Cherry Crumble Doughnuts, Savory Summer Tomato Tart, Ube coconut conchas, Sweet Corn Medovik, and Almond cake with sour cherry jam (I can’t eat that much).
The bake sale will be raising money for Yu & Me Books, which is a bookstore in Chinatown that centers diverse voices and, from the start, has been a community center and kind of home to many people. When a fire on July 4th wrecked the shop, that community immediately began working to raise the money needed to bring it back to life. As hard as it was to hear about what happened, it’s encouraging to see the material result of Lucy’s investment in her neighborhood, and I’m excited to help bring together these two bookstore-communities in a bake sale of epic proportions. (If you can’t make the bake sale but want to support, here’s their GoFundMe.)
The bake I’m contributing is a take on focaccia that feels like eating a scallion pancake. I took Nicola Lamb’s focaccia recipe (please read her whole post if you want to understand what’s going on here) and made it fit my cooking timeline (I do the hands-on steps after Miro has gone to sleep, and then let the dough cold ferment for as long as I want — I think I’ve even left it in the fridge for 4 days). Then, instead of using olive oil (which is what makes focaccia taste like focaccia), I finish the bread with sesame oil plus a big pile of sesame seeds and scallions. I make it quite thin as well, which I think adds to that scallion pancake feel.
(I first made this focaccia for Leanne, after her Secret Ingredient interview about sesame oil. She illustrated the great flyer above!)
Yield: 1 big (13”x18”) thin focaccia (~12 portions)
Ingredients
Poolish (Day 1 Morning)
110g bread flour (I use King Arthur, which is 12.7% protein)
110g water
1/8th teaspoon yeast
Dough (Day 1 Night)
550 grams bread flour
385 grams water
2 grams yeast
Additional 50 grams water with 13 grams salt mixed in
50 grams sunflower oil
To Finish (Day 3 or Whenever You’re Baking)
50-75 grams toasted sesame oil (I don’t really measure this)
4-6 scallions, white and green parts finely sliced
~ ½ cup white sesame seeds
Crunchy salt
Method
Day 1 (in the morning)
Make poolish: In a small bowl or pint container, mix the ingredients listed for poolish (flour, water, and yeast) together. Cover and leave at room temperature all day (or for about 12 hours).
Day 1 (at night)
In a big bowl or container with a lid (I use a plastic third pan and lid), mix together the flour, yeast, and 385 grams water with the poolish. Leave for 30-60 minutes to autolyse (let the flour absorb the water).
In a liquid measuring cup, dissolve the salt in the additional 50 mL water. Mix it into the dough with your hands.
After 15 minutes, stretch and fold the dough. Repeat 3 times every 15 minutes (for an hour of rising).
Add the sunflower oil and work it into the dough. Stretch and fold again.
Cover and leave 1-3 days in the fridge.
Baking Day (up to 3 days later)
A couple hours before you’re ready to bake, take the dough out of the fridge. Grease a half baking sheet (13”x18”) and gently pour the dough out at the center of it. Stretch it to the edges as well as you can and cover the top with a few glugs of sesame oil, working it in with your fingers until you can’t see it. Leave to warm up to room temperature for an hour.
Preheat the oven to 450°F.
Stretch the dough some more (it should be easier now that it’s warm). Sprinkle the sliced scallions all over and then add a thick layer of sesame seeds and a healthy sprinkle of crunchy salt. Pour some more sesame oil on top, covering all of the toppings, and divot the top of the dough with the pads of your fingers.
Bake for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 400° to bake for an additional 10 minutes, until golden-brown on the sides. Remove to a cooling rack and let sit until cool enough to handle. Eat it as soon as you can. If somehow you have leftovers the next day, it makes a great egg sandwich.