My first go at fougasse, which look fab but are actually very simple. I followed Richard Bertinet’s recipe from Dough for these ones. It just involves making his basic white dough then shaping it.
His basic white dough is 10g fresh yeast rubbed into 500g strong white flour, then 10g salt mixed in, and 350g water added. Bring together the sticky dough, knead until it becomes nice and elasticky (don’t add loads of extra flour!), then rested for until doubled in volume (about two hours in my case).
Heated the oven – with baking stone – to 230C.
After the resting, I just cut the dough into four, gently stretching each piece, then cutting slits with the edge of my dough scraper. I gently opened up the slits, then carefully slid/lifted the shaped piece onto a floured, rim-less baking sheet (use peel if you have one) and slid it onto the baking stone. Baked for around 14 minutes, until starting to brown.
Oh, and the word geek in me loves the fact that fougasse is related to foccacia – both words come from focus, the Latin for hearth. As ever, some nifty factology and further explanation on Wikipedia.
Bread, Cakes And Ale 
Pingback: A box of bread