Making bread doesn’t need to be difficult and this recipe is pretty foolproof. The more times you make it the more used to the dough you will become. This has become my “go-to” for any form of potluck occasion. The recipe calls for plain flour as opposed to any speciality bread-making flour, making this a cheap carby-staple that is sure to impress.
This recipe can be scaled up or down depending on how much you would like to make. Using 1kg of flour makes approximately 3 20x30cm focaccias.
Ingredients
1kg of plain flour
6 teaspoons of dry yeast
10 teaspoons of salt
5 tablespoons of olive oil (+ extra for greasing and flavouring)
Approx 750ml of warm water
Salt and Pepper
Garlic Cloves or sprigs of Rosemary to flavour
You will need:
Baking paper
Baking trays
Large Bowl
Cling Film
- 1 In a bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together
- 2 Then add the oil, and gradually add in the water. You don’t want the mixture to be dry. Initially, the mixture will seem wet and sticky.
- 3 Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it is smooth and shiny. Try not to flour your surface as the dough comes together it will regroup and un-stick. Instead, try using some additional oil.
New to kneading? Place the dough in front of you, pull the far end away from you and pull it over and towards you and push it down. Then twist the dough slightly and repeat. - 4 Working from the top down, make the dough into a nice round smooth ball with your hands and divide into bowls and cover lightly with cling film. Remember that the dough will double in size so leave plenty of room.
- 5 Place in a warm place, such as outside in the summer months or in an airing cupboard or near the oven in cooler months.
- 6 Once it has doubled in size (anything from about 20mins to 1 hour depending on how warm it is) you want to give it the short kneed just to get the air back out. Simply just push it over twice.
- 7 Stretch it out onto trays lined with baking paper so that the dough lies around 2cm thick. You really don’t need to be neat! Leave this to rise again in the trays, lightly covered with cling film, again until it has just about doubled in size.
- 8 While the dough is rising for a second time, preheat the oven to 200 degrees centigrade (fan assisted) or 220 degrees (non fan assisted)
- 9 Once risen, sprinkle quite generously with sea salt and a black pepper and some more olive oil. Now it’s time to decide what toppings you like. My favourites are garlic or rosemary. For a garlic focaccia simply press in halved or quartered peeled cloves of garlic about 10 cm apart. For rosemary, do the same with 2cm long sprigs of rosemary.
- 10 Place in the oven for 12-15 minutes. If the foccacia seems to be browning, turn the temperature down slightly. Serve warm. This never lasts long after it comes out of the oven!
You can also make this into a pizza-style bread with cheese, dried oregano and tinned chopped tomatoes and put fresh basil on at the end.