Five Minute Foccacia

I lie occasionally. See, there's another one. I lie a tiddly bit more than occasionally. Mostly it's to get out of doing something I don't feel like doing, or to save hurting someone's feelings (aaand, there's another one).

For example, it would be uncool to tell your friend that they've 'chubbed-up a bit', for instance - although I do give the odd reproving glance at my once-svelte friend's third reach for a doughnut - but only if I feel I am safe from receiving one back, for similar reasons.

But the biggest reason for regular porky-pie telling is that I love to exaggerate. I exaggerate a bazillion times a day. I do it to make a point, emphasise a point, make something banal into something funny, or to brag to my friends about the size of my... I'm kidding, I don't need to brag - mine is huge (well, what size of car did you think I owned?).

Today's recipe is a bit of a whopper actually. You can't actually make foccacia in five minutes from scratch. The dough takes an hour or so to make and the cooking time is about twenty minutes, but the forming and flavouring bit in between those stages is only about one minute in length (oh yeah I forgot, the second rising after the forming stage takes thirty minutes). Er, so in fairness, if you average out these times, then this is a five minute(ish) recipe. I call this 'rationalising' - all liars do it.

But why bother lying at all? Well, I needed to distinguish this recipe from my all-singing-all-dancing, takes-ages-to-make, Foccacia Recipe I posted a while back. This quicker one is such an amazing recipe, that really does only take minutes to prepare, that I didn't want you to think it would be so much work that you couldn't be bothered.

Make some Dough and freeze it and then when its defrosted you can spend literally seconds making this bread. If you eat it raw, then this recipe should really be called 'One Minute Foccacia'. I call this 'joking' - all liars use this as a defence.

I served this with my Sunday Night Antipasti Platter - delicious. But you could cut this bread into strips and serve it with drinks, without any accompaniment at all.

This bread might be quick, but it's also also very cheap. 75p per bread is all. This is not a lie. I Promise.

Makes one 30x15cm Foccacia (Serves 2-4)

INGREDIENTS:

A quarter of my Bread Dough recipe, proved once only
4 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon each of garlic powder, dried rosemary and black pepper
1 teaspoon of sea salt

Preheat oven to 200c. On a well-oiled 30x15cm baking tray, stretch the once-risen dough by hand until it covers the whole surface - it doesn't seem like it will fit at first, but it will. Make dents all over the dough with your fingertips and pour the olive oil all over the surface. Sprinkle the garlic powder, rosemary, black pepper and salt evenly over the dough and allow it to rise for a second and final time. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until risen and all golden and crunchy. Allow to cool a bit before serving.