Authentic Focaccia
The nearest recipe we can find to replicate our delicious breakfast focaccia in Northern Italy!
Ingredients
- 7g dried yeast (1 sachet)
- 180ml lukewarm water (35C)
- 1 tsp honey
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 320g plain flour
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp sea salt flakes for the topping
For the glaze :
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp water
Instructions
- Look out two large bowls (one for mixing and one for resting) and a baking tray.
- 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.
- Place the dried yeast in a large bowl, mix in the warm water and leave to froth for a couple of minutes.
- To the yeast and water mixture add the flour, oil, and honey.
- Pull together the mixture with your hands and knead for 5 minutes.
- 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.
- Shape the dough into a ball, put it in a bowl lightly coated in olive oil. Cover with cling film coated with some more olive oil, and leave to rest for 20 minutes.
- 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 to 4 times. This step should give the bread its familiar soft chewy texture.
- Put a thin coat of olive oil on your baking tray. Place 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.
- Stretch the dough to cover your baking tray, scatter over with sea salt and leave to rest for 30 minutes.
- Use your fingertips to press down all over the dough to create small holes all over.
- Mix the glaze ingredients and drizzle over the bread filling in all the small holes and add some more sea salt flakes.
- Heat the oven to 200C/fan and rest the dough for a further 20 minutes.
- Bake the bread for 20 to 25 minutes until it's golden.
Notes
- When mixing the water and yeast make sure the water is around 35C so that the yeast starts to bubble after a couple of minutes.
- Put the yeast into the bowl first then add the water - it will dissolve easier.
- Coat hands with a small amount of olive oil when working with the dough.