Focaccia!

Ellie finished her school early.

So she gets to learn how to make focaccia!

Focaccia is one of the easiest breads to make. It is very simple, but time consuming to make it. We weigh out 500mg of high gluten pizza dough. Then we whisk in 3 tsp yeast, and a teaspoon of salt.

We then weigh out the water. 400 mg water is 80% hydration, the easiest focaccia dough to make. 500mg water is 100% hydration, the hardest dough to make (it tends to collapse and become rubbery) but we went with it anyway. Because, hey, why not experiment?

Thoroughly mix the water and the flour so that there is no dry flour, and no clear water. It must be thoroughly incorporated. Then we let it sit on the counter for half an hour before we did our first stretch and fold. This is a fairly simple technique (we should have done a video of that) that allows the gluten structure to form lots of cross bridges that will help give it the final pillow structure.

Then coat with olive oil and let it sit another 30 minutes. Repeat 3 or 4 times.

Now we are checking the texture of the dough after 2 hours of rising and folding.

It is such a weird texture. Ellie said it felt like “goop.”

We left it in the refrigerator for 36 hours. It does not rise much while in the refrigerator, but the time allows the gluten chains to form even more firmly.

We took the dough out of the oven and let it warm up on the countertop for an hour and a half. Honestly, I would have liked to let it warm up for another two hours, but that is all the time we had. We had to bake it at Uncle’s house, because our oven is still down and the counter top oven won’t fit a 9×13.

This is what it looked like coming out.

Not bad texture, some good sized pockets, but a little more rubbery than I would like.

Ellie made sure to leave a slice and a note for Uncle so he could have some as well.