I\u2019ve always thought fougasse<\/em>, sometimes called the French cousin of focaccia<\/em>, was quite beautiful, and I could see it had a lot of golden-tasty crust surface area, but it wasn\u2019t until I tried it that I understood the fuss\u2014why you would flatten and cut up your dough! Now I\u2019m a bit obsessed and will probably be fougasse-ing all sorts of dough in the future for my crispy-crust-for-miles enjoyment. Cranberry walnut? Jalape\u00f1o cheddar? The heirloom red fife fougasse<\/a> from the Breadtopia archives? Yes, yes and yes.<\/p>\n This precise olive-rosemary-oregano sourdough fougasse recipe though? It will be on repeat in my house. As soon as I took a bite, I was tempted to finish an entire fougasse and pretend to my family that I\u2019d only baked one and not two. (I did managed to stop at half a fougasse, which is equivalent to about 1\/4 a loaf of bread.) The family also found the fougasse irresistible, making comments around mouthfuls like, \u201cMake this again,\u201d and \u201cOne of the best breads you\u2019ve made.\u201d<\/p>\n The use of rouge de bordeaux whole grain flour<\/a> in the dough adds complex spice-flavor, but you can make flour substitutions as needed, just add water slowly. The recipe was inspired by a yeast-leavened fougasse with kalamata olives, herbs, and chilis on the blog Add1Tbsp<\/a>. I used green olives that were originally stuffed with garlic and jalape\u00f1os, but when I quartered them, I removed (ate) the filling so only olives were included in the dough. Nonetheless, some heat came through in the bread and that was enjoyable, so if I make this with unstuffed olives, I may add a tablespoon of minced pickled jalape\u00f1os, or a couple of Calabrian chilis as per the original recipe.<\/p>\n Here is a video (no sound) showing one way to add olives and herbs to dough<\/strong>. The dough in the video is this Olive and Walnut Sourdough Spelt Bread<\/a>. You can also simply mix in the additions after a brief rest of the dough, which is what I did with my fougasse dough.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/breadtopia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/20250218_162202ab-Copy.jpg\")
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