Kitchen Tips v16

This Kitchen tip is brought to you by Focaccia Bread. :)

I had this posted with my bread recipe, but also thought I would like it separately as a kitchen tip, along with another tid bit of information that I discovered the second time around.

First about waiting for bread to raise....

*If you don't want to wait around so long for bread to raise, a quicker way to help bread raise, no matter if it's fresh, frozen or what you're doing with it....place it in a container(bowl/pan), cover with saran wrap.  First turn the oven on to 170....as soon as it beeps that it's pre-heated, turn the oven OFF....THEN AND ONLY THEN put the pan/bowl/whatever of bread dough into the oven.  The slightly warm oven will help the bread raise faster

My mom taught me this trick when she does this with the frozen bread dough to make rolls or pepperoni pockets or something. )

*Secondly as a tip in regards to the focaccia bread.  The 2nd time I made this it seemed like the outside was a little stiffer than I wanted it to be.  I made it the night before we were going to eat it instead of the same day.  So to help moisten it up, while it was still hot, I wrapped it up in a flour sack towel, then wrapped that in tinfoil to help keep in the heat and moisture.  This really made the bread nice and soft the next day, and the towel helped it from sticking to the tinfoil.