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Vegan/Dairy-Free/Nut-Free
Skill Level: Beginner/Intermediate
Yield: One 9x12 sheet of focaccia
Prep Time: About 30 minutes hands on/2-2 1/2 hours rising time
Cook Time: 20-30 minutes
Equipment Needed:
The Recipe:
Ingredients:
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast, or 1 package of yeast
1 cup warm water (105-115 degrees Fahrenheit)
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus extra to drizzle
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped, optional
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon table salt
Kosher salt for topping, optional
Procedure:
Measure your water and heat it in the microwave. I usually heat for 45 seconds to a minute and read the temperature. It's usually just above where I want it to be, so then I'll just leave the thermometer in the water and watch the temperature go down as I gather my other ingredients until it's perfect.
Add the yeast, warm water, and sugar in a large bowl. Use a spoon to stir gently. Allow this mixture to sit for 10-15 minutes, or until it looks foamy. Important: if it never foams, your yeast is probably old/inactive or your water was too hot or too cold. This will likely affect your end product.
Add 3/4 cup olive oil, and stir gently to combine. If you are adding the rosemary (or any other add-ins, see tips below), add those now and stir.
In a separate bowl, combine flour and table salt with a whisk.
Add flour mixture to your large bowl of wet ingredients about 1 cup at a time, mixing well between each addition, until you have added all of the flour mixture. At this point your dough should be somewhat sticky, but you should easily be able to dump it out onto the counter in one big ball. If it is sticking to the sides of the bowl like crazy, mix in more flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, until it can easily be scraped from the sides of the bowl.
Turn your dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead, adding more flour as necessary if dough begins to really stick to the counter or your hands, for 5-10 minutes. You should observe a noticeable difference in the smoothness and cohesiveness of your dough from start to finish of your kneading process.
Lightly oil a large mixing bowl (see tips below) and place your dough in the bowl, turning it to coat the surface of the dough with oil. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel and allow to rise in a warm place for 1 1/2 hours, or until dough has doubled in size (see tips below).
Generously oil a 9x13-inch cake pan with olive oil. I keep my olive oil in a glass bottle that has a pour spout on top. I poured my oil into my pan in a wide zig-zag motion from this bottle.
Once dough has doubled in size, carefully slide it directly into your prepared pan. Use your finger tips to spread your dough out towards the edges just a bit, then flip your dough over, coating both sides in the olive oil.
As gently as possible, stretch the dough towards the corners (if it doesn't fill the whole pan yet, that's ok! It will.).
Cover the pan tightly with plastic wrap and put in a warm place to rise again for an additional 30-60 minutes.
Move an oven rack to the center position, and preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Once your dough looks like it has puffed up and has expanded to better fit your pan, drizzle more olive oil generously over the top of the dough (see photo in tips below).
Use your finger tips to "dimple" the dough, pressing firmly into the dough and letting the olive oil permeate. I typically go back and forth with my hands down the length of the pan two or more times.
If you would like, sprinkle the top of the dough with a little Kosher salt or sea salt.
If time allows, I like to recover my pan and let my dough do a short third rise (10-30 minutes) since it has deflated a bit from dimpling, but if you don't have time you can skip this one.
Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until the focaccia is a beautiful golden brown.
Transfer pan to a cooling rack and let cool for about 5 minutes, then run a butter knife or straight-edge spatula around the perimeter of the pan and use it to gently coax your bread out of the pan. Transfer bread to a cooling rack to continue to cool.
Store your focaccia wrapped tightly on the counter for 3-4 days, or in the freezer for up to 2 months.
To Serve: Focaccia bread is delicious on it's own, as a side dish with pasta or soup, or I love to slice it in half horizontally and use it to make sandwiches of all kinds!
Adjusting for your diet: If you do not consume gluten, you could try using your favorite gluten-free flour for this focaccia recipe, although I have not tested this myself. If you do, definitely let me know how it goes in the comments!
Tips:
Everyone's oven runs a little differently, so start checking your bread around 20 minutes in and keep a close eye on it. You really want to focus on looking for the visual cues of doneness (deep golden-brown color) vs. being a slave to the kitchen timer.
When oiling a bowl for dough to rise in, I usually just drizzle a small amount of olive oil into my bowl, then use a folded paper towel to coat the bowl in a thin layer of oil.
The first couple of times I made this bread, it was good, but it wasn't great. This fall, we went out to eat at a great Italian restaurant in downtown Minneapolis for a friend's birthday and shared a bunch of dishes, including their homemade focaccia bread. It was the best focaccia bread I have ever had, and one thing I realized immediately upon tasting it was that my original recipe did not use nearly enough olive oil. The restaurant's bread was bursting with rich, savory olive oil flavor, and I couldn't get enough. I've since revamped my recipe, and although it is of course not as good as the delicious offering I had that day, it's definitely improved!
This recipe doubles and freezes beautifully, so you could make two pans at once and freeze one sheet for later use. If you do this, you can mix up the dough in one big batch, allow it to do the first rise, then divide into two pieces before you transfer it to the cake pans.
I used two different pan materials (glass and metal) the first time I made this recipe, because I wanted to see if there was a difference. As you will see in the photo below, the tops didn't differ too much but the bottoms sure did. The metal pan yielded a more browned, slightly more crisp bottom while the glass was softer and not as browned. I prefer the slightly crisper, more browned version, so I have subsequently always used a metal pan for this recipe.
If you are not a fan of rosemary, or want to experiment with different flavors, try changing out the herb! I think substituting sage, basil, thyme, or even Italian flat-leaf parsley could all be really interesting in this bread.
I love salt, and generally go pretty heavy-handed in cases like these. However, the first time I made this bread I probably went a tiny bit overboard! It was pretty salty. If you are sprinkling any salt on top of the dough, err on the side of caution and go light or even omit that step all together if you're not too big on salt.
If you really want to have some fun, try lightly pressing additional ingredients such as olives, green onions, sliced bell peppers, sliced tomatoes, fresh or sauteed onions, or whole herbs into the top of the dough just after you brush with the olive oil in step 12. If you do an Internet search for "focaccia bread art," you will be very inspired :)
I thought making the dimples in the dough was soooo satisfying! Hopefully you will, too.
The Story:
Focaccia bread is one of those recipes that's been on my list of things I want to try making for quite a while. It's delicious, and as I mentioned in the tips section, in the past few years creating "focaccia bread art" has become a thing, and it's pretty interesting to me. I decided before I try my hand at getting artsy, I should probably make sure I can be successful at making the bread.
While I do have baking knowledge, I'm nowhere near a pro, and I found this recipe to be extremely easy and low-maintenance. As you can see in the photo above, the dough turned out just beautifully. I'm really excited to experiment using different herbs mixed into the dough, and creating some focaccia bread art of my own!
I also enjoy running easy little experiments when I bake; this doubled recipe lent itself nicely to an experiment on pan materials. Metal pans traditionally conduct heat very well, while glass or ceramic pans are slower to do so. This explains why, when baked for the exact same amount of time, the bread I baked in the metal pan produced a browner and slightly crisper crust when compared to the glass pan. Had I let my glass pan focaccia bread bake longer, it can be assumed that it too would have browned up nicely on the bottom.
Stay tuned-I'll be back with more photos once I have time to try my hand at focaccia bread art :)
Happy tasting!
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