Among the many joys of cooking is when you take a just-baked focaccia out of the oven and let it cool on a rack.
Oh, the aroma. Oh, the olive oil-drenched golden hue of the dough. Oh, the Maldon sea salt flakes sprinkled over the top.
I recently made one based on the recipe in “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking,” by Samin Nosrat.
It’s a wonderful bread to serve as an appetizer when company is coming over.
I kept mine as basic as it gets: flour, water, yeast, salt, olive oil. I served it with a roasted red pepper/anchovy mix along with a ricotta/honey dipping sauce.
What’s great about focaccia is that it is simpler in many respects to making complex artisan breads. It can be done in one day and does not require the amount of kneading or time that things like sourdough bread call for.
There are so many recipes for focaccia on the web that you just have to read a few of them then use the one you feel most comfortable with. It’s a great way to get into working with bread dough.
And the things you can add to focaccia are only limited by one’s imagination (which is why I kept mine simple).
Of course, I was immensely pleased by Nosrat’s recipe and her Netflix show even shows her and an Italian chef making an “authentic” focaccia in the home country. Highly recommended.
Now I have to go make some sourdough pizza dough. Which is not hard, by any stretch of the imagination.
—LOU
Baking bread of any kind is not my forte. As I have said before, I’ll make a trip to the bakery. Does that make me a bad person? I don’t know. But it saves me time and heating up my house with the oven, which unlike just about everyone these days does not have a minisplit — just a window and a fan.
—LUCY