Sweet Pepper & Sundried Tomato Focaccia

Following on from last week's marbled focaccia; last night I had a go at a sundried tomato one.

One thing that I've not appreciated before is that a lot of the nice flavour in this bread comes from the pepper, and that just using slices of raw pepper doesn't allow it to hit that sweet and lovely taste. This time round I made a paste of sundried tomato and sweet red pepper, as well as using whole pieces of each. I also used the basil oil I made (see last post) to inject some extra flavour.

The result? I'm pretty pleased. I've not hit perfection yet, but I'd happily eat it again. The main mistake I made was to use pieces of tomato sold in a bag. I've used ones in oil in the dough before and it makes it too oily. What I didn't realise was that the tomatoes that come in a bag are preserved in salt and need to be washed first. Yuck! Thus I'm recommending anyone who tries this recipe that they use the type in oil, but just try to really dry them off and remove as much oil as possible before adding.

Ingredients:

• 1 tsp fast acting dried yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp table salt
• 350g White Bread Flour
• Basil Oil
• 210ml Water
• 120g Sundried Tomatoes
• 1 Sweet Red Pepper

Again I made the dough using a bread machine. Place the yeast, sugar, salt, flour, water and 1 tbsp of unstrained basil oil in the pan in the order specified by the manufacturer and set on an italian/pizza dough cycle (45 min on mine). I used table salt this time round because the sea salt used last time didn't give it enough of a kick.

Once the dough has come together (5 minutes or so) add 60g of chopped sundried tomatoes to it, removing as much excess oil as possible with kitchen tissue first.

Cut a sweet red pepper (the long pointy type) into slithers and lightly fry in some sunflower oil to soften. Blend half of the cooked pepper with the other 60g of the sundried tomatoes in a food processor, to create a paste.

When the dough has finished it's cycle roll it out on a floured board, spread the paste over it and top with the remaining pepper. Fold the dough up several times in a random fashion, adjusting the direction of each to marble the paste through it. I found this worked better than last week's twisting.

Place the dough in an oiled 9" springform tin, push it into a circle with your fingers and leave to rise in a warm place for 20 minutes. When risen, use your fingers to poke holes in the dough and fill them with strained basil oil (see first photo). Leave to rise again for 15 minutes, then cook at 200^oc for 20 minutes, until the top is golden and oil absorbed. Allow the bread to cool completely before serving, to fully develop its texture and flavour.