Focaccia
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Category
Bread
Servings
Makes one 13” x 9” bread
Focaccia is great for panini, alongside steamed mussels or with a few spoonfuls of pesto for dipping as an appetizer. Don’t skimp on the olive oil - this is what gives it flavor and a crispy bottom.
Author:The Good LFE Cookbook
Ingredients
1 batch pizza dough
- ½ cup olive oil, divided in ½
- 2 tablespoons chopped rosemary
- Crunchy salt
Directions
Make 1 batch of pizza dough, adding rosemary to flour before mixing. Follow pizza dough recipe adding a few more minutes of kneading to build gluten - about 5 minutes. Instead of dividing into separate balls, place entire ball of dough in large oiled mixing bowl. Like the pizza dough this dough can be made up to three days ahead of time and improves each day. If you are using dough right away cover bowl with damp towel and let rise in warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
- If you are making dough ahead of time, cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let dough rise slowly in the refrigerator pressing dough down each day to make sure it doesn’t escape the container. On day you are using dough, do not push down - you want it to have a full rise when you use it.
- When you are ready to make your bread, preheat oven to 400 degrees and liberally oil sheet pan with ¼ cup olive oil. Tip dough onto sheet pan and use your hands to spread dough to edges of pan. If dough is pulling back towards the center let dough rest for 20 minutes and spread again. When dough is spread to edges of pan, cover with towel, parchment or plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in size - about 1 hour.
- Use your fingers to make dimples over the entire surface of risen dough and pour remaining olive oil over top of dough, filling each indentation and adding additional oil if there are any empty indentations.
- Bake bread in middle of oven for 30-45 minutes until top is nice and golden, rotating pan halfway through. Top finished bread with crunchy salt.