Sourdough Focaccia
Focaccia — what I jokingly like to call “pan pizza bread” — was my first pan-bread project: it’s an easy, rewarding bread for anyone to tackle. Gradually, I began spicing it up. With its airy interior and chewy exterior, focaccia presents the perfect canvas for any experimentation. As I raised my sourdough starter, the overflowing amount of discard I had found a home in focaccia. I swapped out some flour and water for sourdough discard, and threw on whatever fruits and herbs my family had leftover in the kitchen. Here, we have figs and rosemary along with garlic and rosemary.
Ingredients:
focaccia:
170g ripe sourdough starter
170g lukewarm water
362g bread flour
37g olive oil (around 3 tablespoons)
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp instant yeast
toppings:
fig rosemary:
6 figs
fresh rosemary
flaky sea salt
garlic rosemary:
fresh rosemary
5 garlic cloves, minced
3 tbsp salted butter, melted
1 tbsp olive oil
Steps:
Combine flour with water and mix until a shaggy dough forms. Autolyze, or let sit, in a warm area for 1 hour.
Spread starter over the dough. Using wet hands, dimple the starter into the dough and fold the dough to incorporate starter completely. Let sit for 15 minutes.
Add in all the remaining ingredients. Slap and fold the dough to incorporate fully about 10-12 minutes.
Place the dough in a bowl lightly greased with olive oil and cover. Complete 4 sets of coil and folds, each set 30 minutes apart.
After the fourth and final set, let dough rise for 60 minutes.
Drizzle and spread out a generous 1 tablespoon olive oil into the center of an 9 x 13” sheet cake pan. Dump the dough to the pan and coat it with the oil. Gently stretch the dough to the corners of the pan. Once it starts shrinking back, cover, and let rest for 15-20 minutes. Gently stretch the dough one more and let rest (if necessary) until the dough fills the pan. Do not tear the dough in the process — you want to preserve the existing air bubbles for an open, airy crumb.
Cover the pan and transfer to the refrigerator to let rise for 12-14 hours.
The next morning, remove the dough from the fridge. Preheat oven to 400º F for 30-45 minutes.
Coat your fingers in olive oil and gently dimple the dough irregularly. Press down firmly to leave a mark, but not too forcefully that you pop bubbles or deflate the focaccia.
Drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil, letting it pool in some dimples. (For the fig rosemary focaccia, place on your thin slices of fig and rosemary, then sprinkle with flaky sea salt; For the garlic rosemary focaccia, just sprinkle with flaky sea salt).
Bake the focaccia for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown. It’s okay if the tips of some bubbles become burnt.
Remove from oven. Let cool until you can handle it, then transfer onto a wire rack. (For garlic rosemary focaccia, melt the garlic, rosemary, butter, and oil together, and spread lavishly over focaccia). Else, serve warm with honey, salted butter, or a mix of ricotta, honey, and salt.