As we head towards fall, we refused to let the feeling of summer go and picked up some sweet corn at the Dance County Farmers Market. This harmony valley farm’s sweet corn made a perfect ingredient to create a sweet corn focaccia. Alternatively you can always use these for making indian street food style grilled corn using our recipe.
What is Focaccia
If you have always wanted to bake bread this italian bread is the one to start with. It is a very simple airy flatbread facilitated by yeast. Contrary to the pizza this dough uses much more yeast and thus rises more to have airier and bubblier crumb. Olive oil is used in the dough and also is important for the flavor, hence using a good olive oil makes a good focaccia. This is especially true because after the bread is baked its also fed some olive oil to absorb. Its also known as Fougasse in Provence where the recipe is quite similar.
Our Sweet Corn Focaccia
We wanted to use our delicious farmers market sweet corn for our Sweet Corn Focaccia. We drew inspiration from how corn is grilled over coal and eaten all throughout summer and monsoon in india. The grilled corn is rubbed with a halved lime dipped in a salt and chili seasoning. The resulting flavors are sweet, salty, sour and refreshing. We wanted to capture a bit of this in our Sweet Corn Focaccia.
We peeled our corn and cut the kernels. The way to do this is how we learned watching Jacques Pepin. Hold the corn vertical in a bowl to catch the kernels and the instinct is to hold knife horizontally and cut through. The trick is to hold the knife at and angle and cut through downward. You will get lot of clustered kernels in neat columns of 3 or 4 this way.
As mentioned earlier, olive oil is a very important flavor component for focaccia. Hence for our sweet corn focaccia we wanted to use a very nice olive oil. Hence we took a little trip to Vom Fass which is a olive oil merchant in Madison. We tasted a few oils and went for a simple but very flavorful tuscan olive oil named San Gimignano extra virgin olive oil. It is unfiltered and flavorful with grassy components.
After preparing and resting the dough we set it in the pan and pushed in our sweet corn husks and sprinkled it with chili peppers. We sliced lemons thin and halved these slices to dot our focaccia with lemon slices.
It came out gorgeously golden out of the oven. But you have to be careful and let it rest and feed it some olive oil on the top and ofcourse some flaky sea salt.
Cut it when it cools down completely and enjoy the crumbly soft texture.
When you take a bite with sweet corn its sweet and it pops in your mouth while the lemon presents a burst of refreshing acid.
Print
Sweet Corn Focaccia
- Total Time: 3 hours 30 mins
- Yield: 1 loaf 1x
Description
During monsoon in India Sweet corn are grilled over coal and rubbed with a lemon dipped in a seasoning of salt and chili powder. These are the same flavors we try to incorporate in our Sweet Corn Focaccia
Ingredients
- 1 cup bread flour (higher protein content all purpose flour)
- 4 Tbsp Semolina Flour (Very fine grain Semolina)
- 1 cup lukewarm water (108 F)
- 0.25 cup olive oil
- 2 tsp active dry instant yeast
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp red chili flakes
- 1 tsp coarse salt flakes
- 1 sweet corn peeled
- Olive oil for greasing
- Thin sliced limes further cut into halves
Instructions
- Mix the yeast in the water with sugar added and let stand for 15 minutes to come back to foaming bubbly yeast liquid
- Mix this in a stand mixer with mixing attachment with the bread flour, semolina, salt and half the olive oil (Mix in a pot with wooden spoon and then with hand if not using stand mixer)
- Mix till the dough comes together and then knead with kneading attachment till dough is elastic and shiny (Oil the board and stretch out the dough kneading with hands if not using stand mixer)
- Oil a large bowl and let rise covered with a towel till almost double in size in 45 minutes
- Meanwhile husk the corn with a knife cutting down the kernels with the knife at an angle to obtain clusters of corn
- Oil a 6 inch round pan or equivalent
- Stretch the dough on a oil board to fit in the pan and then spread the dough around
- With Your fingers make dimples and holes in the dough surface to create a terrain and use the poked holes to stuff in as many kernels as you can fit in on the surface without overcrowding using the rest for another recipe
- Sprinkle some chili flakes all over and drizzle with half the remaining olive oil (use more if needed)
- Add lemon slice halves on top in between the corn kernels and press some of them in as well
- Cover this and let rest one to two hours till doubled
- Pre heat oven to 450 F
- Then add the rested pan in and reduce heat to 400F and bake for 25 to 35 minutes till baked and not showing any uncooked spot on the top (also check below lemon)
- Remove the pan and drizzle remaining olive oil and top with coarse sea salt flakes
- Let the bread rest till its cool
- Slice in half inch wide pieces
- Prep Time: 3 hours
- Cook Time: 30 mins
- Category: Bread
- Cuisine: Italian Indian
