Halloween pumpkin focaccia

Preparation

• Crush the garlic cloves and chop the rosemary. Put this together with the olive oil in a bowl. Set aside until use.
• Place the flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a large bowl. Pour in the water and mix the ingredients in a food processor with the dough hook. Knead the dough in the machine for 8 minutes.
• Remove the compact dough from the bowl and knead it with your hands for another 2 minutes.
• Form a ball and brush with some oil. Cover the dough with a dishcloth and let rise for 30 minutes at room temperature.
• In the meantime, wash the bell pepper. Carefully cut the stem out of the bell pepper and make sure there is still enough left to be able to stick this part in the bread! You do not bake it, so that the color is preserved.
• Then cut the whole pepper into equal strips. Try to cut at least 8 to 10 strips. If the pepper is a bit smaller in size, use 2 peppers to still get this number of strips.
• Preheat the oven and baking tray to 220 C.
• The dough has now risen considerably. Knead it firmly for another minute.
• Roll out the dough into a circle. To keep a slightly round shape, the shape of a pumpkin, place the dough in the round baking pan.
• Remove the garlic from the olive oil. Divide the olive oil and coarse sea salt over the focaccia.
• Cover the focaccia again and let rise for another 30 minutes before baking.
• To insert the stem later, make a hole in the center of the focaccia using the back of a knife.
• Now place the pepper strips at an equal distance, slightly sloping away on the focaccia. You then press the bars a little deeper into the dough.
• Place the baking pan with the focaccia on the preheated baking tray and bake for 15 to 20 minutes until the top is nicely browned.
• Enjoy!

Tips from the author

I used a yellow pepper for the pumpkin focaccia, but you could use a red color when you eat tomato soup, for example. You then get a tomato focaccia. Also nice to adjust your herbs to this!