Roopa
I thought I’d venture out with my bread baking and decided to try making focaccia! I’ve never made it before, but I had renewed confidence based on my bread roll success! I’ve started making a sourdough levain, but that will be at least another week or two. I evaluated a few different recipes and settled on this one from Home Cooking Adventure because I had the correct flour. I don’t know how it is out there, but flour and other baking staples are in short supply from all the panic buying. It turned out SO well. I forgot to put my chopped up cherry tomatoes on top, so that just means I need to make it again right?
The original recipe can be found here with a few more pictures. I halved it, and have put my altitude adjustments in italic.
Also, here is a rough timing breakdown so you can pace appropriately. It will vary a little bit but should give you a decent sense of how long things will take. The active working steps are in bold.
20 minutes: combine ingredients
1 hour: proof
5 minutes: re-work dough
30 minutes: rest
5 minutes: stretch dough into pan
30 minutes: rest
30 minutes: bake (425 F)
FOCCACIA DOUGH
INGREDIENTS
- 315 g bread flour*
- 7.5 g (1 tsp.) salt
- 5 g (1 tsp.) granulated sugar
- 15 g fresh yeast (I used 13g)*
- 200 g room temp. water (I added 10 – 20 mL more until the dough was a little sticky)
- 28 olive oil
DIRECTIONS
- Whisk together the flour, salt, and sugar in a large bowl.
- Add the yeast and half of the water to the bowl, and combine everything with your hands.
- Add the remainder of the water and the olive oil, and combine everything into a sticky ball.
- Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface. The dough should be sticky, but will become smoother as the gluten develops.
- Knead the dough until the gluten is fully developed (5 – 10 minutes). I like to use the gluten window test to check if my gluten is developed.
- Form a boule and place it in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with saran wrap, and let it proof for ~1 hour at room temperature until it has doubled in size.
- Lightly oil your working surface. Stretch the dough into a rectangle, and fold over in thirds. Rotate 90 degrees, and fold in thirds again. Here is a reference on the letter fold.
- Return the dough to the oiled bowl, cover, and let rest for 30 minutes.
- After the dough has rested, put the dough in a greased 9″ X 13″ pan and stretch it to fit the entire pan. Cover the dough and let it rest for another 30 minutes.
Notes:
- Be sure to use bread flour if possible. Bread flour has a higher gluten content than all purpose flour which is important for getting the right texture in bread.
- If you are (most likely) using dry yeast, then you need to use 1/2 or 1/3 of the amount depending on the kind of yeast you have.
TOPPING + BAKING
INGREDIENTS
- 28 g olive oil
- 15 g (1 tbsp.) water
- Rosemary (ideally fresh but I had it dry)
DIRECTIONS
- While the dough is resting in the pan, preheat the oven to 425 F. Put in a pan of water to create steam.
- Mix together the olive oil, water, and herbs.
- When the dough is ready to bake, poke holes in the dough with your fingers. Pour the olive oil mixture over the dough and brush it across the surface evenly.
- Sprinkle salt (I used Maldon sea salt flakes) across the surface
- Add any other desired toppings (garlic, tomatoes, etc.)
- Bake for ~20 – 30 minutes, until the surface of the bread is golden-brown.
- Once the focaccia is baked, allow it to cool on a cooling rack before cutting it.