Focaccia Bread

This recipe is for Focaccia, a very tasty italian bread where you can add things to the bread when cooking to add flavour and texture to the bread. A few good additions are red onion slices, small sprigs of rosemary, slices of tomato, basil leaves, and thin slices of potato.

600g breadflour
2tsp salt
2tsp olive oil
350ml warm water
30g fresh yeast
Pinch of sugar
Sea salt

Step 1
Mix the yeast and the warm water together and add the pinch of sugar to start the yeast off. cover with cling film and leave in a warm place for 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile add the flour and salt to a large bowl, and add the water/yeast mix when ready. Mix well, adding more flour or water if required, until the dough is moist and does not stick to the sides of the bowl. Add the olive oil to the dough and mix well.

Step 2
Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface, taking care not to mix in too much more flour as the dough needs to be a moist dough. Kneed the dough for about 10 minutes. Put a drizzle of the olive oil into the bowl, then return the dough to the bowl and gently roll it to coat it in oil. Cover with cling film and leave in a warm place to rise until at least doubled in size or starting to collapse.

Step 3
Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide and roll into as many balls as needed. Flatten the balls and stretch them out using your hands into the desired shapes before placing into well greases baking tins.

Step 4
Cover the dough with lightly oiled cling film and leave to prove in a warm place for 30 - 40 minutes. Remove the cling film and preheated the oven to 220 °C. Lightly drizzle some more olive oil over the top of the focaccia and scatter sea salt over the top.

Step 5
Place the focaccia into the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool the bread on wire racks.

If you are adding other flavours and textures to the focaccia then place them on the top when adding the oil and sea salt. Toss in olive oil and gently press into the surface of the focaccia. If adding herbs you can finely chop the herbs and add them to the dough towards the end of step 1 with the olive oil. You can also crumble some soft cheese, like feta or any other soft cheese, over the top before it goes in the oven.











Some pictures of the focaccia I made with red onion, red pepper and rosemary topping on one, and  red onion, red pepper, rosemary, and goats cheese topping on the other.