Who doesn’t love Focaccia, sourdough or not! Focaccia is such a delicious bread that you can top however you like. I’m partial to a really simple focaccia with salt and rosemary, and then eat it hot out of the oven, cut it up and dip it in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
I will be using this recipe from Alexandra’s Kitchen. When it comes to time, when working with sourdough, it is entirely environment dependant. This suggests letting the dough proof for between 4-18 hours. How is anyone supposed to know how much time it will really need?! Well, this is why baking requires skills of observation. The author of this recipe is smart to suggest that you allow your dough to rise in a transparent tub so that it easy to monitor the growth of your dough. This way, you do not have to worry about the time so much, it’s way more about the growth of your dough – which you can observe. Because in summer, in a warm kitchen, the first rise would probably only need 4 hours, but in winter it may need the full 18 hours.
Like most sourdough recipes I do, I will be making these in the evening, and allowing them to rest overnight on my counter (my house is not that warm, and it’s nearing winter so I don’t expect it will over proof).
The key for focaccia is the second rise in the baking dish. After it’s doubled its size during the first rise, you pull it out into a baking dish that has olive oil in it. Then it needs to rise (likely) at least 4 hours. The dough needs to be puffy and almost doubled in size. Then comes the verrrrry fun part of baking focaccia.
When the second rise/proof is complete, you drizzle the dough with olive oil and push your fingers all the way down to the bottom of the dish. Check out this very satisfying video by Shebakesourdough (Jade Lim).
By doing this you create the iconic aeration and bubbles of focaccia. In this video by Shebakesourdough Lim is doing delicious pesto and cherry tomato topping, which I would definitely like to try but as I said, I’m partial to a very simple focaccia topping.
If you try to make your own focaccia, do not fret if it doesn’t look as amazingly bubbly and beautiful as Lim’s she’s an expert. Mine won’t look like that – I’m finding my biggest issue with baking sourdough is my lack of patience to let things rise fully. Focaccia really needs that long rise time so I’ll have to be patient.
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