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Olive Focaccia Bread

This is one of my favorite breads to make with dinner.

Makes one 17x11in rectangular focaccia

Ingredients

1 pkg. active dry yeast

4 ½ cups/540g unbleached all-purpose flour

1 ¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup hot water (120F)

1 cup hot milk (120F)

¼ cup olive oil

1 cup coarsely chopped, pitted black olives

1. In a large bowl with a whisk or in the work bowl of a heavy-duty electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the yeast, 2 cups of the flour, and the salt. Add the hot water, hot milk, and the olive oil. Beat until well combined, about 2 minutes. Mix in the olives. Add the remaining flour, ½ cup at a time, until a soft dough that just clears the sides of the bowl is formed. Switch to a wooden spoon when necessary if making by hand. The dough will be sticky soft and oily. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, drizzle the sides of the bowl with a bit more olive oil, and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Let rise at room temperature until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

2. Oil or parchment-line a 17x11in baking sheet. Turn the dough out onto the baking sheet. Spread and gently pull the dough, flattening it to fit the entire baking sheet. Smear the top evenly with all the pesto. Let rest, uncovered at room temperature for 15 minutes.

3. Twenty minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450F, with a baking stone on the bottom rack, if desired. Place the sheet or pans directly on the hot stone, if using, or on the lowest oven rack and bake 15 minutes. Reduce the oven thermostat to 350F and continue to bake until golden and the bread springs back when pressed gently, 20 minutes more. Let cool in the pan 5 minutes. Using a spatula, loosen the sides with a knife and slip the bread out carefully onto a clean dish towel or to a cooling rack. Cool and serve at room temperature.

Olive Pesto

Ingredients

1 can (6 ounces) California pitted black olives

¼ fresh grated parmesan

¼ bunch flat-leaf parsley, stemmed

1 tablespoon capers, rinsed and drained

2 to 4 tablespoons fruity olive oil

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Pinch of fresh or dried thyme leaves

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Place all ingredients in a food processor or blender. Pulse on and off until rough textured puree is made. Store in the fridge for up to 5 days before using. May also be made using a mortar and pestle.

Recipe from “The Bread Bible” by Beth Hensberger

http://www.amazon.com/Bread-Bible-300-Favorite-Recipes/dp/0811845265/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203358256&sr=1-2

Hibernate and Spring

There appears to be a bit of heat out there concerning the use of the Spring Hibernate ORM API's to work with Hibernate.

Here's a Blog entry where some comments are made that Gavin doesn't take too kindly to.

I have a lot of respect for Gavin, and it's unfortunate that the anonymous posters got under his skin a bit. I learned a lot from reading it tho. You really do have to do your homework before trying to flame the guy - as you should.

Here's an article on Sessions and Hibernate:
http://www.hibernate.org/42.html

WSDL Binding Style and Encoding

Good article

Binding Styles = RPC or Document.
Binding Use = Encoded or Literal

WS-I Basic Profile 1.1 prefers the use of literal encoding here.

After reading a bit more I think I understand the history behind encoding. The SOAP specification was actually written prior to the adoption of the W3C XSD spec. Since the XSD spec had not yet been adopted, another way of encoding type information had to be used and SOAP encoding was born.

Once XSD was adopted, serialization to various programming language types was possible. JAX-RPC does just that for java. It maps java types to XML Schema Elements.

So, unless I find a VERY good reason to use SOAP encoding, I shant.

Web Services Standards gone wild

I started reading an interesting article talking about the complexity of Web Services.

A certain consultant gave his opinion here.

An even more notable person, Tim Bray created a blog entry loyally opposing the WS-* craze. Tim Bray is notable because he's one of the fathers of XML. His argument against the WS-explosion is that many of the standards appear to NOT be coming from industry experience - theory before practice.

Have we advanced far enough to be able to threorize standards that end up being practical without taking some hard hits in the ring? The jury's out with me. I'm just at the point of trying to catch up a bit on where Web Services have gone since I've not paid enough attention to it over the last year. Stay tuned. I try to always have an opinion :-)