Week 4 Bake: Dimples that stay

The week 4 bench session — a focaccia mixed two days early, dimpled warm, and fried crisp in the oil it sits in

15 March 2027

Your dough has to be older than the session. Mix it Saturday for a 48-hour retard, Sunday morning for 24, and bring it in the tub it fermented in.

Before the session#

Build 500 g of flour at 78% hydration, 2% salt, 5% olive oil, and 0.5 g of instant yeast for a 48-hour retard or 1 g for a 24-hour one. Weigh the oil rather than pouring it; a confident glug is about 15 g and you want the number, not the gesture. Add it once the dough has come together. Oil in with the water coats the proteins before they have had a chance to link, and at 5% that costs you mixing time.

Two or three folds at twenty-minute intervals on the bench, then into an oiled tub, covered, into the fridge inside the hour. It will not reach 4 °C for another six to twelve hours — a covered tub of dough sheds heat slowly, and a good part of the flavour is made on the way down. A fridge running at 7 °C will have the dough over the top of the tub by Sunday night, so put a thermometer in yours once rather than trusting the dial.

Buy a plain olive oil for this, not the bottle you finish salads with. You are using about 75 g of it and holding most of that at 240 °C.

Bring the tub cold. Do not let it sit out on the drive in.

In the session#

Idris starts with two doughs torn side by side, identical except that one was mixed at 5% oil and the other at zero. The oiled one pulls apart short. The other one strings. That is the argument for fat in the crumb, made in about fifteen seconds.

Then your dough comes out of the fridge and into a quarter-sheet pan carrying 30 g of oil — enough to move when you tilt it. Turn the dough once to coat the top, then leave it alone for 60 to 90 minutes. It goes into the pan cold and it gets dimpled warm, at 18 to 20 °C, and that hour is the difference between a dough that spreads under your fingers and one that fights you and tears.

Dimple with oiled fingertips, straight down to the metal, no dragging. Pressed to the base and held there a moment, the dough is pinned, and a dough this proofed has little spring left to undo the work. The holes stay holes and fill with oil. Under-proof it and you will watch them close over in ten minutes.

Last, the brine: 20 g water, 20 g oil, 2 g salt, whisked cloudy and poured over straight away, before it separates again. Pour it, do not brush it — brushing drags the dimples flat.

Into a 240 °C oven on the lowest rack for 18 to 22 minutes. It will bake at 220 °C; the base just takes longer to set and browns less. Drop to 200 °C, or skimp on the pan oil, and the underside browns too slowly to keep up with the crumb, which is the pale greasy base that is the most common way this one fails. We cut everything at the bench and compare undersides.

Afterwards#

Bake-off 1 falls on Friday 19 March and reaches back across everything from the plain loaf to today’s pan. Its page has the brief, the deadline and the rules.

5% oil in the dough is about the edge of lean, and what you pool under it or brush over it does not count. Past roughly 10% in the dough you are into enriched territory, which is week 9 and a different set of problems. Between now and Friday, bake one more of whichever week you are least sure of.