Fauxcoccia Cheese Bread

Now lemme tell you this bread was a huge hit! It went even faster than than the buns did, and I've already made it once since. I also found this recipe through StumbleUpon on a blog called Perry's Plate. I didn't make very many changes to the original recipe because it was already incredibly simple and easy.

This bread is a lot like a focaccia expect it's a lot flatter and doesn't have rosemary but that's why it's called fauxcoccia...

Fauxcoccia Cheese Bread

Fauxcoccia Dough

• 2 1/2 c. flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1 tbsp. yeast
• 1 c. warm wate
• 1 tbsp. oil

*Preheat oven to 500 degrees*

Combine flour, salt, sugar, and yeast in a medium sized bowl. In a cup mix the warm water and oil then add it to the dry ingredient mixture. Mix the dough with your hands and add additional flour if the dough is too wet and having trouble forming. Transfer the dough onto a floured surface and knead for 1 to 2 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Grease a separate bowl with olive oil and place the dough into it. Turn the dough once so that the top has been greased.

Cover the dough and let it rise for 20 minutes. Just like I did with the brioche buns I let the bread rise on top of the warm oven and for the last ten minutes brought it to the edge of the stove, opened the oven a crack and let the heat escape. The dough ended up rising a lot!

While your dough is rising you can get everything ready for your seasoning.

Seasoning

• 1/4 tsp. crushed garlic
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. oregano
• 1/4 tsp. thyme
• 1/2 c. parmesan
• dash pepper
• 1/4 (or more) c. of Italian dressing

I make my own Italian dressing from a packet that I mix with oil, vinegar, and water but I'm sure that it doesn't matter what kind of dressing you use as long as it's Italian.

In a bowl mix together the salt, oregano, pepper, and thyme. If you don't have crushed garlic use garlic powder and go ahead and mix it in with the other seasonings. Since I prefer to use store bought crushed garlic I just mixed that in a glass with my Italian dressing. I didn't measure either but I mixed them together until it looked right to me. I happen to like a lot of garlic so I used more than 1/4 tsp.

Once your dough is done rising punch it down and place it onto a pizza pan or any kind of sheet. Press it into the shape of the pan that you are using. Once it is pressed you are ready to season it! If you happen to have a pastry brush use that and brush the dressing onto the dough. If, like me, you can't find yours or you don't have one ball up a paper towel and dip it into the dressing then brush it onto your dough. I didn't use all of the dressing so don't worry if you don't either.

Once your dough is covered with the dressing go ahead and sprinkle it with the salt, oregano, and thyme mixture.

After your dough is thoroughly covered and seasoned add your cheese. I don't find a purpose in measuring out my cheese so I just eyeball it until the dough is covered in it.

Place your dough in the oven and cook for about 15 min. My family is very picky about bread/pizza - the bottom must be browned. Ten minutes into cooking I took the bread off of the pizza stone and cooked it just on the rack. (It took a lot of maneuvering to get it off the stone with out it falling or burning me...)

I cooked it for another 5 minutes then broiled it for 1 minutes so that the cheese was all bubbly and toasty.

Yay! You're delicious fauxcoccia is finished! I let the bros tear off pieces and it eat that way but the second time I made it for family dinner so I used a pizza cutter and cut it into strips.

I'm thinking about using this recipe for pizza dough the next time I make it, so I'll let you know how that turns out. This bread is so yummy and incredibly easy to make!

*The changes I made to the original recipe include but probably aren't limited to... using only Parmesan (instead of mozzarella), crushed garlic, and I cooked the dough at 500 not 450.

I also found a better picture of my buns :)

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