Recipes with “Full Moon” in the name might be wearing a bit thin lately here on Ghoul at Heart, but this Full Moon Focaccia Bread just had to be made. I love trees and I love moons and I especially love the look of a skeletal tree with a full moon behind it. It’s some of my favorite imagery, Halloween or otherwise. You can see it in my All Hallows’ Cheese Board and in my Haunted Hamlet with my large white clock mimicking a full moon behind a haunted house and leafless tree. So I hope you’ll indulge me as I offer up one more Tree and Moon inspired recipe that is not only beautiful but delicious! Enjoy!
So for this Halloween inspired focaccia art, I used a little bit of squid ink to give the focaccia dough a gray hue. I didn’t want to make it too dark because I wanted the herbs to show up against the bread dough, but feel free to add more squid ink if you want to make the ‘bread sky’ a little darker. The tree started from a slice of shallot, because it looked like a tree scar from a trimmed branch. I softened up some red onion rings in the oven so they would be pliable to create the trunk and branches. Then I pulled out all my Halloween cookie cutters and punches to come up with a fun night time scene. My first attempt was to make skeletons, but that idea was a hot mess, so I kept it simple and used a ghost cutter that had an embosser, so that it punched in the eyes and mouth, but feel free to use what ever you have on hand to make your own Halloween scene. I added some stars, pumpkin patch, a bat and lots of fresh herbs to garnish and flavor the bread. Enjoy!
Full Moon Focaccia
Ingredients
Focaccia Bread
- 1 3/4 cups warm water
- 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 1/4 tsp squid ink (for color)
- 5 cups all purpose flour (plus more for kneading)
- 1 Tbsp kosher salt (plus more for sprinkling top before baking)
- 1 cup olive oil, divided extra virgin
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 Tbsp fresh rosemary, minced
Garnishes
- 1 red onion, sliced into rounds (tree)
- 1 shallot, sliced into rounds (tree knot)
- 1 carrot (pumpkins)
- 1 turnip (ghosts and moon)
- 1 yellow bell pepper (stars)
- assorted fresh herbs (chives, parsley, thyme, rosemary)
- seaweed nori sheet (for bat)
Instructions
Focaccia Bread
- Mix warm water, yeast, sugar, and squid ink in a small bowl and let yeast proof for 15 minutes until frothy. In a stand mixer with a dough hook, add flour, salt, 1/2 cup of the olive oil, and the yeast mixture and mix on low until just combined. Turn mixer on medium speed and mix for 5 minutes. Add additional flour if dough is too sticky.
- Turn out of mixer and knead once or twice to form a ball. Clean mixer bowl and add a small amount of olive oil, add dough and cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 1 hour or until doubled. While dough rises, make herbed olive oil with the remaining 1/2 cup of olive oil by adding minced garlic and rosemary and set aside. (While dough rises prepare vegetable garnishes, see below)
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Pour the herbed olive oil onto a large rimmed baking sheet. Turn out dough onto cookie sheet, turning the dough to coat each side with olive oil. Spread out dough and use your fingers to poke holes into the surface of the dough. Cover and let rise 1 hour. (While dough rises, assemble a mock up of your Halloween scene on a cutting board.)
Garnishes
- Red Onion Tree- Cut a small slice of shallot for the tree scar and then cut slices of red onion and slice a radius into slices to create long strips of onions for the branches and trunk of the tree. Soften onions so that they lay flat, by heating them in a warm oven for 3-5 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool enough to handle. Assemble a mock up scene on a cutting board.
- Carrot Pumpkins- Peel the large end of a carrot and cut off a 3 inch section of the large end. Use a knife to cut two vertical shallow cuts on the 3 inch section of carrot to form the stem and then cut perpendicular to the vertical stem cut to wedge out of the carrot on each side of the stem. Slice carrot into thin slices to create pumpkin slices.
- Turnip Moon and ghosts- Cut a thin slice from the middle of a turnip to make the full moon. Cut very thin slices to make ghosts using a ghost cookie cutter. The thinner slices of turnips will create a translucent looking ghosts. 🙂
- Pepper Stars- Use a mini star cookie cutter to cut stars out of yellow peppers.
- Transfer your mock up from the cutting board to the surface of the focaccia and then garnish with fresh herbs. Sprinkle top of focaccia bread with kosher salt before baking.
- Using a bat paper punch or cookie cutter, punch out or cut out a bat from nori seaweed and place in the center of the moon.
- In a preheated 425 degree oven, bake for 25-30 minutes. Let cool and serve.
