Foccacia!!!
I have a secret to tell you…. It’s one I don’t protect very well… Are you ready? Here it is: Making bread is very easy. That’s it!
Now… what does easy mean? Does it mean that it is fast? No. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people mistake being fast for being easy. Is it possible to make good break quickly? I’d say yes, but I do believe that doing so ISN’T easy. I also firmly believe that the best breads you can make are SUPER simple, and they don’t require specialized skills, equipment or knowledge to make wholesome and delicious bread to share with you whole family! Good things come from those who wait, and an excellent example of this is focaccia!
Focaccia is a flat leavened bread often baked on a hearth. It’s usually drenched in olive oil, and often topped with delicious items including tomatoes, peppers, garlic, olives, cheese, meats, or really anything you desire. Focaccia is super flexible, as it can be eaten as a side dish by itself, or split for sandwiches. Naturally, it can also be made into wonderfully light and crispy croutons.
We started baking focaccia for our local farmers market this summer, and it has quickly become a favorite.
Our whole recipe and process is below, but first, a few notes on equipment and ingredients…
To my thinking, the necessary equipment for making good bread in the home kitchen is minimal. Once you start baking a lot, you will get a feel for bread… you will understand if your gluten is well developed, if your dough is happy or sad, if it is rising at the rate you need it to, and if not, you’ll know why. When you get to this point (and it really doesn’t take too long) all you will need is your dough and an oven, and some sort of pan, tray or stone to bake in/on.
Until you attain that level of comfort, there are a few things I highly recommend, The first is a good kitchen scale capable of weighing in grams. This allow you to really understand how much of each ingredient you are using, and be repeatable. You’ll be able to weigh out flour and water for a 90% hydration dough, and do so repeatably until you know what a 90% hydration dough should feel like!
For focaccia, I also recommend having a good pizza stone and a shallow metal baking pan. Any pan with a flat bottom will work. You can make this in round pans, rectangle pans, you could even use one of those silly crust only brownie pans! For the purpose of this recipe, I’m assuming you’ll have a standard 9 x 13 inch metal cake pan. A non stick coating is desirable for this, as it will help the bread release. Focaccia can stick to aluminum pans quite well, even with copious olive oil. Pyrex or other pans are OK, but they don’t conduct heat well. The bottom of your focaccia will be difficult to brown.
A note on flour. The quality of your bread will come down to the techniques you use, and the ingredients you put into it. I have made hundreds of excellent loaves with the cheapest store brand all purpose flour imaginable, and I encourage you to do the same! I’ve also learned that certain brands of flour give consistently excellent results, and have become quite loyal to King Arthur Flour. I do recommend King Arthur Bread flour for this recipe, as I know it will give a nice airy and chewy bread. I’m not even going to mention various whole grain or specialty flours, or thy glorious results you can get milling your own..., that’ll be a blog post for another day.
A note on yeast: A long time ago, there was active dry yeast. This is yeast that needs to be activated in a slurry with liquid and some sugar before use. Forget about that stuff. Look for “instant yeast” or “bread machine yeast”. It is much easier to use, as you simply mix it with your dry ingredients, and you don’t need a lot.
The focaccia: This recipe takes 2 days from start to finish. The hands of time is fairly short, less than 30 minutes in total, but it does require some planning out.
Day 1. Today, we are making a starter.
1.) Weigh out 250 grams of flour into a medium mixing bowl. .
2.) To the flour, add a quarter teaspoon of instant yeast.
3.) add 250 grams of water to the flour. Mix it up until everything is wet. Feel free to use your hands! Get right in there! It will wash off!!!! You could also use a handheld or stand mixer with a dough hook, or a handheld dough whisk if your fingers are dough averse.
4.) Cover your bowl and let it sit overnight at room temperature.
This will become our starter. It is a 100% hydration starter, because it uses a 1:1 ration of water to flour. If you use a weaker all purpose flour, the starter will be much runnier than if you use a high gluten bread flour. Either way, it will get nice and bubbly. You can actually make this multiple days in advance, and leave it in a fridge. In fact, flavor will be enhanced greatly by 2 days in the fridge. Should you decide to take the fridge route, just remove it and let it warm up a bit before moving on.
Day 2.
1.) To your starter, add another 250 grams of flour, 12 grams of salt, and 200 grams of water.
2.) Don’t use a mixer for this. Use your hands. Wet your hands first, and it will help the dough not stick to you. Mix it until all the ingredients are wet through and incorporated with the starter. It doesn’t need to be perfectly smooth, some lumps are OK. Set aside your dough for an hour.
3.) In an hour we will stretch and fold our dough. Wet your hands, grab the dough and pull part of it up, flopping it over on itself. I’m gonna call it "pull and flop" instead of "stretch and fold" that all the other bakers use! Pull and flop a few times… as long as you find it fun, but 4-5 times should be sufficient!
4.) wait another 45 minutes, pull and flop some more!
5.) give it another 45 minutes, pull and flop it yet again! By now, any lumps you have should be worked out, and you should have a nice and smooth, and very wet dough. It should also be getting obviously bubbly and a bit firmer, especially if you’ve used the good bread flour.
6.) Prepare your metal cake pan by liberally coating it with olive oil.
7.) Transfer your dough to the pan. Let it sit for an hour.
8.) Preheat your oven to the hottest temp it will go. 500-550 would be ideal. 450 is OK. It would be nice if there was a pizza stone on the bottom rack, but not necessary. It would just help the bottom bake better.
9.) After an hour, your dough will have relaxed. Hopefully, it is also bubbly in the pan. Pour a little more olive oil on top of the dough. The amount is completely up to you - experimenting with different flavored oils can add fun experiences. In general, I would use a few tablespoons. I like just enough to evenly coat the dough. Use your fingers to spread the dough evenly throughout the pan, making dimples and spreading the olive oil as you do. The more dimples the better! Get those fingers oily!!!
This is the time you want to add any ingredients. Garlic powder? Sea salt? Everything bagel seasoning? Cheese? Cinnamon Sugar? Olives? Rosemary? Pepperoni? Sun Dried Tomatoes? Sure! Layer them on top of the dough, and make pretty designs if you'd like.
10.) You can put your focaccia in the oven now, or let it set a bit more. The longer it sits, the more bubbles you’ll get, and the airier your final product will be (it shouldn't take more than an hour for maximum bubble). Pop it in the oven, for about 20 minutes, or until the top is golden brown. *PRO TIP* If you have an instant read thermometer, and you know that just about all bread is baked when it reaches 195 degrees Fahrenheit, you can use it to test your focaccia. Sometimes, bread is technically baked and at temp, but still might look pale and unappetizing. This happens when the heat is too low, or you open the oven and look at it too many times. This is better than having bread that looks great but is still doughy inside from an oven that is too hot. It’s really hard to mess up the focaccia though, it is very forgiving.
When it’s done, all that’s left to do is take it out, cut it up and enjoy~ Bon apetit!
Focaccia is very forgiving, and there is a ton of flexibility in this recipe and you should feel free to experiment. If you make this bread and like it, let us know in the comments. Also, if you have other tips or suggestions of your own, add those!
Ciao!
