Cheesy Onion Mini Focaccia My 2 500th Post

Todays post is my 2,500th post, am very happy and proud. Nothing is possible without all your constant support and encouraging words.Thanks to each and every for being part of my culinary journey.Am starting today my first week of blogging marathon with an interesting theme,yep todays theme is savoury baked dishes. Obviously the next two days posts are going to be baked savoury dishes. For my todays post, am posting a classic Italian,super cheesy and aromatic mini focaccia bread.Focaccia is a flat oven baked Italian bread which may be topped with herbs,cheese,veggies or simply with other ingredients like meats.Focaccia bread are quite popular in italy and they are flavoured with many ingredients.

Focaccia dough ressembles quite like pizza dough and they are rolled out or pressed by hand into thick layer of dough and then baked in oven.This bread can be used as side for many meals also for making sandwich bread.Usually focaccia comes in three variations, classic focaccia with fresh tomatoes and olives, potato focaccia with potato slices and white Focaccia with salt grains and rosemary. Some other variations includes peppers, onions, eggplant or other vegetables.Coming to my mini focaccia, i simply prepared with grated cheese along with sauteed onions and parsley leaves, a pect side to enjoy with some warm soups.Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#30.

3cups All purpose flour

2tsp Active dry yeast
1tsp Salt
1tsp Sugar
1 +1/4cups Warm water
1cup Onion (chopped)
3tbsp Parsley leaves (chopped)
Salt for cooking the onions
Olive oil (sauting and drizzling)
Grated cheese (for topping)

Mix the sugar, salt and yeast in luke warm water, let them sit for 5 minutes.

Take the all purpose flour in a mixing bowl, add the foaming yeast, mix everything well.

It will be stickly at this point, transfer the them to lightly floured surface, knead for a while until they turn as a soft dough.

Coat a deep bowl with olive oil,place the soft dough also brush with more oil, cover it and let it sit for an hour in a warm place.

Punch down the doubled dough and divide the dough as 7-8balls, knead the dough again and make a medium sized circle like disc.

Arrange the flattened disc in a baking sheet lined over a baking tray.

Meanwhile heat the olive oil , saute well the chopped onion and chopped parsley leaves with salt together for few minutes and keep aside..

The dough will doubled again in size.

Press the dough gently in the center with your fingertips, just spread the sauteed onion and parsley leaves over the dough.

Gently sprinkle the grated cheese over the onion mixture.

Preheat the oven to 350F, place the baking tray in middle rack, bake for 15-20 minutes or else until the dough turns slightly brown..

Serve them with cream cheese, salads or else with a bowl of soup.Sending to Gurus Giveaway - Kids Special.

Mini Broccoli Pesto Pizza Home Bakers Challenge

Baking is one of my stress burster, i can bake for hours and i love it. Actually while chitchatting with some of our buddies, suddenly we planned to start a baking group and this is how this beautiful Home Bakers Challenge, our new baking baby group was born. Every month a host will give her choice of bake and bakers from this group will bake the posted recipe within a month, between 10th -12th of each month we will post our tried recipes in our respective blogs. How easy na, yep anyone who love baking or to experiment their baking skills can join their hands with us.

For our first month of Home Bakers Challenge, the host of the month Divya Prakash of Divyas Culinary Journey chosed Pizza with 4 varieties, one with pizza sauce while the another one is without pizza sauce,the third one is with pesto sauce and the last but not the least is naanizza, an Indianized version of pizza with naan.I chosed pesto pizza and baked few mini pesto pizza with homemade basil and walnut pesto with our family favourite veggie broccoli. Each and every baker of this group can chose their toppings with their favourite veggies or cheese,watever this group members are really very amazing and they baked varieties of pizza with beautiful toppings.Thanks to Divya for suggesting us pizza for the first bake of this group and we loved it.

Recipe source : Martha Stewart

2+1/4 tsp Active Dry Or Instant Yeast
4 cups All-purpose Flour
1 tsp  Salt
1tsp Sugar
1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Sprinkle yeast over 1 1/2 cups warm (not lukewarm) water.

Combine flour,sugar and salt in a bowl,drizzle in olive oil until combined with flour. Next, pour in yeast-water mixture and mix until just combined.

Coat a separate mixing bowl with olive oil, and form the dough into a ball.

Coat the dough with olive oil, then cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and store in the fridge until you need it.It’s best to make the dough at least 24 hours in advance, and 3 or 4 days is even better.

Basil Pesto:

2cups Fresh basil leaves

1/4cup Walnuts

2nos Garlic cloves

Salt

Pepper

Olive oil (as per need)

Bring boil two cups of salted water, drop the basil leaves,within few seconds drain them and let them cool completely.

Pat dry them completely.

In a food processor, take the nuts,basil leaves,garlic,salt,pepper,process until the nuts are finely chopped.

While the machine running, pour the oil and grind until smooth. Transfer the pesto to an air tighted box.

Basil pesto is ready..

Assembling the pizza:

Broccoli florets (as per need)

Grated mozzarella cheese

Take enough pizza dough,roll it as small sized circular discs.

Transfer the rolled pizza dough to a baking sheet placed over a baking tray.

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Spread the pesto sauce to the rolled disc,arrange the broccoli florets over the pizza base finally sprinkle the grated cheese over the veggies.

Bake this vegetarian pizza in the middle rack for 20-25minutes until the cheese melts.