Sweet Berry Fougasse

The Sweet Berry Fougasse marks my first Tuesdays With Dorie post in almost six months.  While I continue to bake many of the recipes, in March I started a new job in San Francisco.  Eleven hours away from home each day, much of that spent in front of computer monitor sapped my motivation to put together posts.  Going forward, my hope is to return to a more regular schedule of baking and writing.  However, this will be my first experiment with somewhat more abbreviated (for me anyway) posts.

Sweet Berry Fougasse is a recipe from Craig Kominiak, former Navy cook and owner of Ecce Panis in New York.  Craig’s White Loaves were the kickoff recipe from Baking With Julia for the TWD group.  The group also tackled his Whole Wheat Loaves, and Foccacia, although I did not bake the latter.  The Fougasse uses focaccia dough as a base for a morning pastry of sorts, topped with fruit and a streusel mixture prior to baking.

The dough is a fairly standard high-moisture dough, with olive oil for added elasticity and a long refrigerated fermentation to develop a bubbly dough.  I veered slightly from the recipe, adding 4 1/2 Tbs. of sugar to a half recipe of dough.  For the fruit I went with a mixture of fresh raspberries and blueberries.

After stretching out the dough (no rolling so as to preserve bubbles in the dough), I cut it into 6 pieces, toppings each with the fruit and then the sugar/flour/butter/spice mixture.  A little over 20 minutes in a hot and steamy oven, and they were done, save a brief period to cool off.

I prefer my pastries somewhat sweeter, both in the crust/crumb portion, as well as any fruit topping.  Raspberries in particular bake up quite tart.  I expected the streusel to counter the tart berries; it did not.  Perhaps tossing fruit with sugar would help, though I don’t see myself baking this recipe again.  I would definitely make the focaccia dough again for a savory application; the dough came together nicely and develops good texture with little work.