Fougasse, or land mine, is bread baked in Provence. Literally the name of this bread is translated as "flour cake". Indeed, by and large, a land mine is a cake baked in the form of a tree leaf.

French bread Fougasse

Usually the land mine was sent to the oven first and the time during which it was baked was counted. After that, it was decided whether it was possible to start baking another bread. As in the Italian focaccia, various fillings are put into the land mine, ranging from traditional Provencal herbs and cheese to nuts and dried fruits.

French bread Fougasse

The disadvantage of a land mine is that it only keeps fresh for one day. To restore the original softness of the bread, it must be placed in the oven and reheated at low heat.

Land mine with walnuts and raisins

To prepare a land mine with walnuts and raisins, you need the following ingredients:
500 g flour
40 g honey
300 ml warm water
2 tbsp. l. olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp with a slide of dry "active" yeast
80 g shelled walnut kernels
80 g raisins.

How to prepare a land mine with walnuts and raisins:

1. Mix flour with salt and sift into a large bowl. Pour yeast there, pour olive oil and warm water with honey dissolved in it. Knead the dough for 5-7 minutes. By the end of the batch, it should be very elastic and should not stick to the sides of the cup or to your hands. Return the dough to the cup, previously oiled from the inside with oil, and, covering it with a film or a napkin, put it in a warm place to rise. This process usually takes an hour or an hour and a half.
2. Scald the raisins with boiling water and dry them. Crush the nuts with a pestle or rolling pin, mix them with raisins and a little flour. Add 1-2 tablespoons of water to the mixture and stir. You will get a thick, sticky mass.
3. When the dough comes up, it needs to be precipitated and mixed with a mass of nuts and raisins. Knead the dough for a few minutes, and then divide it into 2-4 pieces of the same size. Roll each piece of dough into an oval cake and shape it into a woody leaf. In the middle of the cakes, make a longitudinal wide cut, and on the sides of it - three more transverse ones. The cakes should look like veined leaves.
4. Put the cakes on a baking sheet, grease them with olive oil on top and cover them with a light cloth and let them stand for 30-60 minutes. Bake a land mine at 210-220 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. Cover the finished bread and let it stand for 20-30 minutes.

Land mine with olives and herbs.

To make a land mine with olives and herbs, you need the following ingredients:
1 tsp dry yeast
1 tsp Sahara
4.5 tbsp. wheat flour
2 tbsp. l. olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 pinch cornmeal
0.5 tbsp. pitted olives
0.25 tbsp pitted olives
2 tbsp. l. fresh parsley
2 tbsp. l. thyme
1 tbsp. l. rosemary
Sea salt and ground black pepper to taste.

How to prepare a land mine with olives and herbs:

1. Rub the yeast with your hands, pour it together with salt and sugar into a wide cup and pour 1.3 cups of warm water. Mix well and leave for 10-15 minutes for the yeast to work. Pour olive oil into the dough, add the sifted flour and knead the dough. First, you need to stir it with a spoon, and when the mass thickens enough, knead it with your hands, then put it on a table sprinkled with flour and knead for about 7 minutes until a soft, non-sticky dough is obtained. Transfer the dough to a greased bowl and leave warm for an hour and a half, so that it doubles. Cover the bowl so that the dough does not turn out to be windy.
2. Knead the dough, shape it into a round loaf and divide it into 5 identical triangular sectors, moving from the center to the edges. Roll each sector into a triangular flat cake, 12.5 by 20 centimeters in size and half a centimeter thick. In the wide part of each "sheet", make 3 cuts at the same distance from each other, extending them to the middle of the product. In the middle of the sharp part of the triangle, make another small incision. Extend the incisions with your fingers so that they look like wide, elongated slits. Cover the "leaves" with a damp cloth and leave to rise for half an hour.
3. Finely chop olives, parsley, olives, rosemary and thyme and stir. Grease each tortilla with olive oil and sprinkle with the spicy mixture, and then salt and pepper a little. Bake bread at 160 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

We will prepare the dough in a safe way. Grind the yeast with flour and salt. It is allowed to use fresh wet yeast, you will need to take 20-25 g.

Make a depression in the center of the mixture and pour in warm water. The water temperature should be about + 38 degrees. If you use cool water, the yeast will not grow well, and if you use hot water, it will die and the dough will not rise.

• If you use whey instead of water, your baked goods will be much tastier and more fluffy.
• In addition to wheat flour, 2-3 tbsp can be added to these baked goods. tablespoons of bran.

Knead the dough. Hand knead for 10 minutes. Roll up a ball, place in a greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap.


Leave the dough warm for 1.5 hours to come up. It is very convenient for this purpose to use a multicooker, included in the "yogurt / dough" mode. The bowl of the electrical appliance is heated to a temperature of + 37-40 degrees - these conditions are optimal for the functioning of yeast cultures. Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Divide the dough in half.


Form a leaf-shaped bread from each half. It is convenient to do this as follows: roll an oval out of a semi-finished product, and then roll it out on a board with a rolling pin so that the cake is 8-10 mm thick. Make cuts on it with a sharp knife, first in the center (without cutting 2 cm from each edge), and then 3 oblique cuts on the left and right. The resulting holes should be slightly stretched to form oval windows. Now the product looks like a veined petal.

For a crispier crust of French bread, sprinkle with cornmeal before baking.
Some cooks advise greasing the surface of the cake with olive oil, sprinkle with ground coriander or sesame seeds before baking.

Cover the dough with a towel and leave for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Place a container of water in the oven. Reduce the temperature to 230 degrees and bake the bread for 10 minutes.


Before serving, it is recommended that the land mine cool down on a baking sheet (or on a wire rack) for at least a quarter of an hour. It is most tasty and soft on the same day, after baking, after a day it becomes stale. To prevent baked goods from drying out, it is recommended to store them in a plastic container with a tightly closed lid or in a plastic bag. The shelf life is no more than two days.


If the land mine is classic, without additives, then it can be smeared with butter, pour over honey and eat with tea or coffee. It is also very appetizing with warm milk. But if you knead the dough with the addition of salted filling (cheese, herbs, olives, vegetables, etc.), then you can serve wine on the table. The true French do just that. The famous Provencal sauces with garlic and spices will not be superfluous.

Some housewives prefer to prepare baked goods for future use. It is very convenient to freeze several ready-made tortillas in a food container or bag, then, if necessary, take them out and reheat them in the microwave. They will be soft, warm, almost like fresh. It's a great idea to take a few scones with you as a snack to work or on the road.

Some cooks recommend not baking the land mines completely before freezing, but half (keep in the oven for only 6-7 minutes). Then cool them completely, place in a bag and freeze. Before eating, the cakes need to be baked without first defrosting.... They are placed in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

There are many recipes for landmine. Since this is bread with a filling, and there is a great variety of fillings, then you should also cook a new mine every day. And you can make it without filling at all.

Fugass is something akin to the Italian focaccia. In fact, this is a bread cake made from a delicate and very simple dough. Often, additives are introduced into the dough: olives, olives, anchovies, tomatoes, etc. It is very easy to recognize this bread by its interesting shape, reminiscent of a leaf. Thanks to this molding, the land mine has a lot of tasty crispy crust, which becomes even more crispy due to sprinkling with corn flour.

Cooking time: about 2.5 hours

Ingredients

To bake 2 landmines, you will need:

• 500 grams of wheat flour
• 300 ml of water
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 1.5 tbsp. tablespoons of sugar
• 5 grams dry yeast (or 15 grams fresh)
• corn flour for dusting

Preparation

Sift flour and mix with salt.



Pour the yeast with warm water, adding sugar to it. Stir well until dissolved.



Knead to smooth dough. It should be pretty cool. You can knead the dough either by hand or in a combine or bread machine (7-8 minutes).



Let the dough rest for 20-25 minutes. During this time, the gluten will increase and it will become softer.



Knead the dough again for 4-5 minutes, then send it to a warm place for proofing, covered with a towel or plastic wrap. The dough should increase 2-2.5 times. This usually takes 50-60 minutes, but it is better to be guided by the eye, because even in the same kitchen, the rise time can be different each time.



When the dough is ready, place it on a floured work surface and divide into 2 pieces.
Roll each piece into a sheet-like layer. The thickness of the layer is 1-1.2 cm.



Place the land mine on a cutting board lined with baking paper. Transfer this plate to a baking sheet, and sprinkle the bread with cornmeal on top.



Send the bread to the oven for proofing at 50 degrees. After 20 minutes, take out the landmine - by that time it will already be lush.



Remove the board with the product, return the empty baking sheet to the oven and heat it to 200-210 degrees.
Make cuts at the mine itself with a sharp knife or blade.



Gently transfer the bread to a hot baking sheet and bake until golden brown (about 20 minutes). Bon Appetit!

1. In a large bowl, stir in yeast, sugar, 11⁄3 cups warm water and let stand for 10 minutes. Add flour, olive oil, salt and stir. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface. Knead for 6 minutes. Cover with a damp tea towel and let stand until the dough has doubled in size, 1 1⁄2 hours. Preheat oven to 260 degrees. Divide the dough into 5 equal parts.

2. Roll each piece into a triangle measuring 12.5X20 cm and about 6 mm thick. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and lightly sprinkled with cornmeal.

3. Using a sharp knife, draw 3 parallel lines in the middle of the dough and one small line just below and parallel to the middle line. Stretch the incisions with your fingers to create small gaps. Cover with a damp towel and leave for 30 minutes.

4. Grind olives, olives, parsley, thyme and rosemary. Combine olives, olives, spices and herbs in a bowl. Lightly brush each dough piece with olive oil using a brush. Sprinkle with the prepared mixture, season with salt and pepper. Bake the bread, one at a time, until golden brown, about 15 minutes each.

That's all we need.

Simple, isn't it? Four elements. Add to them the fifth - your soul - and we will surely reveal the secret of the universe! Well, for the fifth element!
Oh, sorry, I got distracted!
But we will not make dough with you! Instead, we sift the flour (I am a woman with a twist, I sift it twice! If the flour is not very successful, it happens three times!), Put a small amount of it in a bowl or some other vessel, reverently rub our fresh yeast with flour! (No, girls, whatever you want - there is some ancient magic in the process of dough making!) We try to grind it into dust, into the consistency of flour, we can't do it, and we stop at the format of a very small crumb.

Add salt and water. Stir for two minutes until this mass begins to at least remotely resemble dough. Something like this:

Further - a terrible horror and nightmare! This sticky, unlikely piece of putty falls out onto our perfectly clean work surface, and we understand that we will never clean the table! Calmly! Believe me - it will come off by itself, with a whistle! Only this will already be the Dough!
Our general idea is to knead the dough with air, the more the better. We will catch it with the test.
We DON'T DRINK flour on the table !!! We collect our conditionally dough into a conditionally ball, slip it under it on both sides of the hand and, holding it on top with our thumbs,

With one dexterous movement we turn it over in the air and, with a savory sound, slap it back on the other side.

And we fold it forward, arching in a wave. We poke the edges into it, trying to return the shape of a conditionally ball.

We repeat the whole process. We try not to crush the dough - the air caught by us will come out!
At first it will be difficult to hold and turn this liquid mess, but after two or three cycles you will feel that the dough is being born at your fingertips! Soft, airy, plastic and ... yours!
The whole mixing process takes 5 minutes! (Well, for the first time a little longer, of course!) Now you can lightly dust the surface with flour, lay our dough on it and form a ball, wrapping the edges to the center and pressing them down with your hand. We put the ball with the seam down in a bowl where it will fit,

cover with a towel and put in a warm place for about an hour. The dough should double in volume.

We heat the oven to 250 degrees. If you have a baking stone, along with a stone. If not, turn the baking sheet upside down, and we will bake on it.
We spread our dough in one piece on a table sprinkled with flour. Sprinkle with flour and our dough, preferably corn, it will give a pleasant yellow color when baked. We carefully level our dough with our hand, that way we iron it, trying to give it the shape of a rectangle. We cut lengthwise into two parts, and each into three more. We got six blanks for land mines.
Cut through the cake with a sharp knife and push the cuts apart. Do not grind - five holes will be enough, and small cuts will stick together when baking. We make one long cut in the center and two more on the sides.

It is more convenient to do this on a board sprinkled with flour, so that later you can easily and quickly shake off into the oven.
O! Speaking of the oven! What about our temperature? 250! Fine! Quickly shake off our high-explosive workpiece on an inverted baking sheet, spray the oven with a spray bottle so that the crust crunches, and close. (It would be better, of course, to do this quickly so that the oven does not cool down.) Reduce the temperature to 230 and bake our bread for 10-12 minutes until golden brown. And for the sake of this crust, we do not poke into the oven for the first 5 minutes! During this time, we are preparing the next land mine. And we take out this miracle from the oven!

Try it! Tasty? Then you are lost! You will bake bread! And every time it will turn out more and more tasty and faster. You can add olives to the dough before lifting, cutting each into three parts, you can add lightly fried onions, this is exactly the option my homemade loves, you can slightly press thyme into the land mine before baking. The options are dark!
And if you think six land mines are too much for the waist, freeze them! In this case, we bake landmines for 6-7 minutes, take them out, cool them completely, wrap them in parchment, put them in a plastic bag, tie them tightly and put them in the freezer. And before serving, without defrosting, we throw them into the oven for 12 minutes. At t = 180-200 gr.

I want to repent: this land mine is slightly irregular in shape, it lay unsuccessfully on a baking sheet. The normal form resembles a monstera leaf. But while I was fussing at the stove and running after the camera, they ate normal land mines, as you can see, with olive oil and garlic topped with wine. But despite the shape, this one was also delicious!
Bon appetit!