I am back with another awesome bread using the Harvest Grains Blend from King Arthur Flour. I just might be addicted to this mix. Luckily, that's not a bad thing since it's chock-full of seeds and grains.
This time I made a focaccia bread from a cookbook I've owned for many years but haven't picked up in a quite a while. It's called Panini Express. I remember thinking how lovely the typography and layout of the book was when I first got it, and I was reminded of that when I flipped through it recently and found this bread.
The focus of the book is pressed sandwiches, so bread and condiment recipes act as accessories to the many sandwich recipes. I decided to just make the seeded focaccia and come up with my own sandwich, using random ingredients I had on hand. Hello, caramelized onion, bacon, and cheddar panini! Leave it to me to come up with such a combination for this healthy bread.
To make the bread, you first mix the Harvest Grains Blend with water (the actual recipe calls for different amounts of flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds, but I just added up the total weight and substituted the blend) and let it soak for a while. (I actually think next time I will toast the blend in butter instead, as I did with the Toasted Harvest Grains Bread.)
Then you mix oil, yeast, sugar, salt, flour (I did mostly all-purpose and a little whole-wheat), and the soaked grain blend with more water and knead the mixture in a stand mixer.
Then you transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl, cover it with plastic wrap, and let it rise until doubled in volume.
Next, you oil a large rimmed baking sheet and press the dough evenly into the pan.
After 5 minutes, you stretch it again, brush it with olive oil, sprinkle it with sea salt, cover it with plastic wrap, and let it rise again.
Finally, you bake the focaccia until golden, transfer the pan to a cooling rack, and let it cool in the pan.
Then you cut the focaccia into whatever size squares you like.
To use it for sandwiches, you simply split the squares horizontally, fill them with whatever you want, and press them on a panini press (if desired).
For the seeded focaccia recipe, check out Panini Express: 70 Delicious Recipes Hot Off the Press.
What kind of panini would you make on this bread?
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