Sourdough Focaccia

It is hot every day and the motivation to bake is hard to summon. For a change of mood, let's make focaccia.

Seasoned with olive oil and herbs, it is eaten as it is, or split and filled with ham, meat, vegetables or cheese as a sandwich; it is also the ancestor of pizza. It is served as a snack before the antipasto, as an accompaniment to a dish, or alongside bread. Those from Puglia and Liguria are particularly well known, and in some places there is a custom of the father — who normally does not cook — making it for family celebrations.

A dough of bread flour, oil, water, salt and yeast is pressed out thickly by hand or with a rolling pin and baked in a stone oven. Part of the surface may swell into a bubble before it is fully baked, in which case the air is let out with a knife.

From the Wikipedia entry on focaccia

Working from a recipe by The Perfect Loaf  , whom I often refer to, I made focaccia for the first time — and concluded that in a Japanese summer this comes down entirely to controlling the fermentation.

Step 1 — Making the dough

The biggest difference from an ordinary sourdough loaf is the olive oil in the dough. And where I normally use water at about 65% of the flour, this focaccia takes 74%. Those two things are what give focaccia its particular flavour and texture.

Ingredients (dough):

• Starter50g
• Bread flour (Kitanokaori)200g
• Wholemeal spelt flour50g
• Water (around 20°C)185cc
• Olive oil5g
• Salt4g

Ingredients (topping):

• Cherry tomatoes4
• Aubergine, 1/8

Mixing the dough

1. Put the measured water, the starter and the salt in a bowl and stir until fully dissolved.

2. Once mixed, sift the combined flours into the bowl from step 1 and mix — the olive oil does not go in yet. Start with the scraper, turning the flour up from the bottom of the bowl. Once it is roughly combined, use your hands to bring it together into a single mass.

3. Add the measured olive oil to the dough from step 2 and mix. Ordinary sourdough involves very little working, but here you mix thoroughly for about ten minutes. At first the hydration is so high that it is sticky, close to a batter. Keep mixing and the gluten gradually brings it together.

Stretch and fold

4. The first stretch and fold, exactly as with an ordinary sourdough loaf. Work around the dough, stretching and folding roughly four to six times.

5. Cover the bowl and leave it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5, for four stretch-and-fold sessions in total.

Over roughly two hours of fermentation, the stickiness settles down a great deal and the surface turns smooth.

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Step 2 — Shaping

7. Take the dough out of the bowl, stretch it into a rectangle, and place it in an oiled cake tin or other heatproof tray.

8. Cover and ferment at room temperature for about two hours.

9. Wet your fingertips and press dimples into the surface of the dough. This makes it rise evenly.

10. Slice the toppings and arrange them.

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Step 3 — Baking the focaccia

11. Preheat the oven to 250°C. Once it is up to temperature, finish the dough with olive oil and salt.

12. Put the tray in the oven and bake at 230°C for 30 minutes.

This one follows a recipe by The Perfect Loaf  . The room was too warm, so I fermented it cold in the fridge — and the fermentation time given in the recipe turned out to be a little short for that. Next time I will try five stretch and folds at 45 minutes each.

Baked with summer vegetables and herbs on top, it is wonderful. Do try making focaccia with sourdough.

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I had another go at focaccia, this time controlling the fermentation time.

Sourdough Focaccia, Take Two