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A little while ago, my wife and I took an Italian cooking class. It turned out to be more of an Italian cooking demonstration than class, but either way, it was still a lot of fun. The class covered all of the basics – fresh pasta and ravioli, homemade sauces, and Italian bread. This class was designed for total novices, so the chef only presented rather foolproof recipes.
Focaccia is an Italian flatbread. It can be seasoned with basics herbs, cheeses, and even meats. We’ll keep this focaccia recipe simple and just season it with herbs. Once you get the hang of it, feel free to add fresh parmesan or whatever else you think would go well with it.
What I like about this focaccia bread recipe is its simplicity. I love to make bread, but oftentimes, high-quality recipes require a little forethought because they need 24+ hours to ferment. While this may sacrifice some of the complex flavors (the herbs deliver a lot of the flavor here), this is something that I have made many days on quick notice.
You’ll notice that I only have volumetric measurements for this bread. Like I said, it’s pretty basic. It’s a very wet dough, and because of that, is very forgiving. Although I rarely recommend non-metric based recipes, I think that this is a great place for beginners to gain some confidence and begin to understand why they should learn how to make their own bread.
Focaccia Recipe
Makes one 9×13 pan of bread
| Ingredient | Volumetric Measurement |
| Hot Water | 2 cups |
| Active Dry Yeast | 1 Tablespoon |
| Bread Flour | 3.5 Cups |
| Salt | 0.5 Tablespoon |
| Sugar | 0.5 Tablespoon |
| Olive Oil | 1 Tablespoon |
| Black Pepper | 0.5 Teaspoon |
| Italian Seasoning | 1 Tablespoon (divided between dough and topping) |
Instructions
- In a large bowl or stand mixer, mix together hot water, yeast, and olive oil. Let stand for 2 minutes
- Add salt, sugar, black pepper, 0.5 tablespoons of Italian seasoning and mix thoroughly.
- Add bread flour and mix until you have a very wet and sticky dough. All ingredients should be evenly dispersed.
- If you don’t have a stand mixer you can use your hands. Check out my Working with Doughs post on how to keep your hands clean. The short answer is to keep them wet.
- Spray a 9×13 pan liberally with cooking oil and then pour the dough into the pan making sure that it is even throughout.
- Sprinkle the remaining 0.5 tablespoons of Italian seasoning on top of the dough
- Cover the pan with either plastic wrap or a dish towel.
- I personally recommend plastic wrap. I would also spray the plastic wrap with cooking oil as well. The dough will rise and this will keep it from sticking to the wrap.
- Let it rise for 1-1.5 hours.
- You want the dough to double in size. The time that this takes will vary based on temperature among other things. I find that it is about an hour.
- Like I said earlier, this recipe is very forgiving. It is hard to over-proof the bread.
- About 30 minutes prior to baking, preheat the oven to 400°F convection (425°F non-convection)
- Bake for 30 minutes.