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Focaccia
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Focaccia

Delicious focaccia with an open crumb and toppings of your choice
Prep Time4 hours
Cook Time30 minutes
Course: Bread
Servings: 8 people
Author: Crust and Crumb

Ingredients

Dough

  • 517 g white bread flour (preferably unbleached stoneground flour)
  • 465 g water
  • 13 g salt
  • 5 g yeast

Toppings

  • 100 ml olive oil
  • garlic to taste or
  • green herbs like rosemary or oreganum or
  • black olives, pitted and chopped or halved or
  • sundried tomato pesto or basil pesto
  • 2 pinches flakey sea salt

Instructions

  • Mix all ingredients for the dough until everything comes together. This is a very wet dough, so do not be alarmed at this stage that the dough is very sloppy.
  • Do three sets of stretch and folds* (see note) in the first hour after initial mixing - one set of stretch & fold every 20 minutes. After the last stretch & fold, the dough should be nice and elastic.
  • Let the dough rise in a warm spot for about 90 minutes after the final fold. The dough should double in size.
  • Use about 75ml of the olive oil and combine with your choice of toppings (except salt). Let the oil infuse while your dough rises.
  • Prepare a baking tray by lining it with a silicone sheet or baking paper or grease with some olive oil.
  • Drizzle about 25ml of olive oil on top of the dough before turning it out onto the baking tray. The dough should be able to move around on the baking tray due to the oil.
  • Use your fingers to spread out the dough until it covers the tray. If the dough doesn't want to spread out to fill the tray, let it rest for 10 minutes and then do some more spreading out. You can also gently pick up each side of the dough and stretch it out carefully.
  • Add your infused olive oil and toppings and use your fingers to make dimples in the dough. The oil should pool in the dimples. Spread out the toppings evenly.
  • Preheat the oven to 220°C with the fan on if your oven has one.
  • Let the dough proof for about 30-45minutes on the baking tray before baking. It should be puffing up in bubbles around your toppings.
  • Sprinkle the coarse salt evenly on top of the dough just before baking. Bake for about 25 minutes or until golden.

Notes

  • Stretch & Fold:
Instead of kneading the dough, the stretch & fold method develops the gluten in the flour by stretching the dough every now and then and folding it back onto itself. Wet your hand and lift up a part of the dough, stretch it upwards and fold it back onto the remaining dough. Turn your bowl a quarter turn and do the same stretch & fold. Turn your bowl a quarter turn and stretch & fold two more times. This is seen as one set of stretch & fold. You should do a set like this three times, every twenty minutes.
  • The toppings you put on your focaccia is really up to you. Olive oil, garlic and green herbs are usually the basic choices with some sea salt for flavour. 
  • I have made my focaccia in a large rectangular baking tray. You can also use a round deep-dish pizza pan.
  • I have also done a more "free form" focaccia where I used the rectangular baking tray, but I didn't stretch the dough out to the corners, just leaving it in a natural shape.
  • The baker's formula (if you're into using that) is: Total Dough Weigh = 1000g, Total Percentage = 1,9, Total Flour Weight = 517g
    • Flour 100%
    • Water 90%
    • Salt 2,5%
    • Yeast 1%
  • If you would prefer to use sourdough starter rather than yeast, the quantities are as follows:
Baker's Formula: Total Dough Weight = 1000g, Total Percentage = 2.12, Total Flour Weight = 472g
    • Flour 100%: 472g
    • Water 90%: 424g
    • Leaven 20%: 94g
    • Salt 2%: 10g