Authentic Focaccia

David has tried making lots of different focaccia recipes over the years, which have turned out well, but on a holiday to Italy in a small town called Pontremoli (near Florence), we discovered the best focaccia ever…it was like nothing we’d ever tasted!!!   The bakery was a stone’s throw from where we were staying, so we ended up going every morning…via the coffee shop – which sold the best coffee ever too…to buy focaccia to have at breakfast or sometimes for lunch!

On our return to Scotland, David scoured the internet for an authentic recipe – he tried a few but nothing ever measured up to the bread we’d had in Pontremoli. That was until he found this recipe on Silvia Colloca’s blog and although it takes a bit of time, with all the resting, the end result is definitely worth it. 

So…make the time and within a few hours you will be munching on the best focaccia you have ever had…try it alongside our Smoked Salmon and Prawn Risotto or Spaghetti Carbonara.

TIPS

David has stayed fairly closely to Silvia’s method, however, he has picked up a couple of things while making bread and has added the following notes to the instructions:

• make sure the water is warm enough
• coat your hands with olive oil when working with the dough
• always add the water to the yeast and not the other way around

 

 

Ingredients

• 7g dried yeast (1 sachet)
• 180ml lukewarm water (35C)
• 1 tsp honey
• 320g plain flour
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp sea salt flakes for the topping 

For the glaze:

• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp of water

Instructions

1. Look out two large bowls (one for mixing and one for resting) and a baking tray.
2. Either heat a kettle and mix hot water with cold or use the hot water tap to get lukewarm water that sits around 35C – this temperature, when added to the dried yeast will “waken it up” for the fermentation process and give your bread the best chance.
3. Place the dried yeast in a large bowl, mix in the warm water and leave to froth for a couple of minutes.
4. To the yeast and water mixture add the flour, oil and honey.
5. Pull together the mixture with your hands and knead for 5 minutes.
6. Add the salt to the dough and knead until the dough looks smooth and elastic – by hand this will take around 10 minutes of kneading, but you can use an electric mixer to cut this down to 5 minutes.
7. Shape the dough into a ball, put it in a bowl lightly coated in olive oil and cover with cling film coated with some more olive oil. Leave to rest for 20 minutes.
8. Remove the dough from the bowl and keep the cling film for later. Stretch the dough by hand to make a rectangle about the same size as your baking tray and then fold it over on itself 3-4 times. This step should give the bread its familiar soft chewy texture.
9. Put a thin coat of olive oil on your baking tray, put the dough in the middle of the tray and cover with the same cling film used earlier. Put it somewhere warm and leave to prove for 90 minutes or until doubled in size.
10. Stretch the dough to cover your baking tray, scatter over with sea salt and leave to rest for 30 minutes.
11. Use your fingertips to press down the all over the dough to create small holes all over.
12. Mix the glaze ingredients and drizzle over the bread filling in all the small holes and add some more sea salt flakes.
13. Heat the oven to 200C/fan and rest the dough for a further 20 minutes.
14. Bake the bread for 20-25 minutes until its golden.