Covid Carb-Loading: Rosemary Focaccia with roasted onion & tomatoes

If you’ve already stress-eaten all your muffins and your body is still craving the sweet release of death or the next 5 lbs of bread. This ones for you.

To be completely honest, Focaccia is legit one of my favorite breads in the world. It’s so versatile! You can make it with almost any kind of topping, you can slice it in half and make it into a sandwich, you can wrap it up and eat it along your journey as you walk along the barren streets like Will Smith in “I Am Legend”. It’s honestly simple, delicious, beautiful and fits any season and any flavor profile.

The first round of focaccia that Adrian made was a delicious rosemary infused, roasted tomato & onion topped magical concoction during the peak of the frenzy that Covid-19 had brought. I was heavily self-medicated and frantically trying to work through emails from panicked clients and vendors to coordinate new dates for their weddings.

Recipe

2 1/2 cups bread flour

3/4 cup + 2 tbsp EVOO

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1 cup warm (not hot) water

3 tsp dry yeast (or 1.5 packets)

1/2 tsp sugar

3 cloves garlic

2 tbsps chopped rosemary

Topping

1/2 vidalia onion, sliced into thin strips

handful of cherry tomatoes

Instructions

1. Put yeast & sugar in cup of warm water, mix thoroughly. Wait until foaming

2. In a mixer wit ha hook attachment or a large bowl place your flour, salt & pepper and start mixing, add half yeast mixture after it is thoroughly combined add the other half. Let it knead for 10-12 minutes until surface is shiny & smooth.

3. While that is kneading, in a small pan heated over medium, chop your garlic and cook in 1/4 cup of your oil until it is golden and fragrant. Add your rosemary until fragrant. Set aside.

4. After the garlic/rosemary oil is cool, add to the dough mixture in your mixer and let incorporate fully.

5. Take another 1/4 cup of oil and coat a large bowl. Place dough in the bowl, cover it with a clean kitchen towel, place in a warm spot and every 20 minutes fold the dough back in on itself with the oil. Repeat this 3-4 times.

6. Take a square jellyroll pan or baking sheet and take 1/4 cup of EVOO and cover your baking sheet & sides. Stretch your dough out with your hands until all the air is out until it’s about 1/3 inch tall. Let proof for 25-30 minutes.

7. Preheat your oven to 475. Place your tomatoes & 2 tbsps oil on a baking sheet or in a packet made of tin foil to roast 15-20 minutes.

8. When tomatoes are roasted down, remove from oven and let cool. Take your fingers and poke the focaccia down to create lots of little craters typical of focaccia.

9. Take your roasted tomatoes and onion slices and cover your focaccia evenly. Place in your oven and bake for 18-20 minutes. Checking on it around 15 minutes because every oven is different!

10. Take that beautiful sheet of bread out, let cool until warm and slice it up

Variations

Sandwich

This focaccia recipe has beautiful Italian flavors and is delicious on its own and works incredibly well as a sandwich. The next day for lunch we added fresh mozzarella & Prosciutto and the following we did fresh mozzarella and salami and it was chef kiss perfect.

Parmesan Zucchini

swap your rosemary for thyme and roast as normal with your garlic. For the topping, swap out onion & roasted tomatoes for sliced zucchini & squash then sprinkle with grated parmesan. Bake as normal!

Rosemary Olive

Swap your tomatoes with sliced green olives and keep everything else the same

Mushroom & Cheese

Swap your rosemary for thyme again. Add portabella & crimini mushrooms with crumbled goat cheese on top.

Covid Carb-loading: Chocolate Chunk Pumpkin Muffins

I don’t have to tell you what’s going on here. You’ve already seen the movie, either the original 1980s Mel Gibson classic or the 2015 version with Tom Hardy, Road Warrior/Mad Max seems to be life imitating art. It appears the post-apocalyptic dystopia is coming and it’s time for all of us to brace ourselves with the only thing that can possibly contradict the misery of what we are about to experience:

Muffins.

If Mad Max, burning metal and fight scenes are at one end of the existence spectrum, full blown battle-hardened dystopia. Fresh-baked muffins, warm out of the oven and wafting through the air are at the opposite, wholesome, Disney-Movie utopian end. Minus the evil witches (although I don’t know your life)

I know it’s not pumpkin season, but canned pumpkin lasts apparently a million years and is good to bust out when you have a chilly, rainy, cloudy spring in addition to the impending end of the world.

I first had my first incredible chocolate chunk pumpkin muffin years ago from a little spot called The Breadery, tucked away in Oella, MD. A tiny town adjacent to already tiny historic Ellicott City. From that point forward it had remained the holy grail, something I sought out at every single bakery I entered, seeking, hungrily like a fiend for their next fix.

So here I am to share with you this incredibly delicious, apocalypse proof, carb-heavy beauty chock-full of dark chocolate chunks with slight hints of those delicious, cozy fall pumpkin pie flavors.

P.S. These freeze incredibly well! Because this recipe makes about 10 large muffins or 18 standard size muffins., if you’re a solo person you probably shouldn’t eat all of them in one sitting (I’m not saying you can’t). Once they have cooled completely, wrap each tightly in saran wrap, then in tin foil and pop them in the freezer individually or in a ziploc back, pop one out and heat in a muffin tin for about 5 minutes at 275.

P.S. I didn’t do a photoshoot of my muffins because #1 I ate them all too fast, #2 I’m lazy and fat from all the carbs I ate #3 people have to pay good money to see my muffins, CashApp or Venmo only (this is a joke please don’t dm me).

RECIPE

3/4 cups granulated sugar

3/4 cups of pumpkin puree

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs

3 tsps vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups AP flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (1/4 tsp each of nutmeg, ginger, cloves)

1 tsp salt

1 bag of Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 semi-sweet chocolate baking bar

Instructions

1. Wash your hands

2. Preheat your oven to 425. Line your muffin tins then sit that on your counter, next to your stockpile of toilet paper.

3. in a mixer or a large bowl, mix your pumpkin puree, sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla until completely blended and no lumpy bumps.

4. In another medium sized bowl, mix your flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice and salt. Whisk together until completely blended.

5. Slowly incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ones until completely blended with a rubber spatula or your whisk.

6. With a serrated knife, chop the baking bar into various sized chunks, smaller than a quarter.

7. Add half the baking bar chocolate and 3/4 of the bag of chips to the pumpkin mixture. Mix together with your whisk or rubber spatula.

8. Drop batter into muffin tins 2/3 of the way to the top. Top with the remaining chopped chocolate and chocolate chips. Eat a few just to make sure they aren’t poison.

9. Bake in the oven for 5 minutes at 425. Then turn the pan to cook evenly, lower the heat to 350 and bake for another 16 minutes. The trick to a great muffin, just like with a great cupcake is to slightly undercook it by like 1 minute. If you’re afraid of salmonella from the eggs or something else, you’re obviously not aware of the world around us and I would rather die by muffin than respiratory failure.

10. Wait for them to cool then enjoy with coffee, tea and the end of humanity as we know it.