Quick Focaccia Recipe with Za'atar Seasoning (2024)

FAQs

Is focaccia better with bread flour or all purpose flour? ›

Use your favorite kind—I prefer extra virgin olive oil. Bread Flour or All-Purpose Flour: I tested this focaccia with both and prefer the bread flour variety. Both are great, but bread flour has a higher protein content so it yields a chewier texture.

Now, focaccia uses plenty of olive oil, not only in the dough, but for kneading, proofing, in the baking pan, and on the bread's surface before baking. All this fat means the texture is light, moist and springy, the crust emerges golden and crisp, plus the center stays soft for days afterwards.

Why is my focaccia not fluffy or chewy? It could be the type of flour you used. The best flour to use to make focaccia bread is bread flour which gives you fluffy baked bread. Or, it could also be because you did not knead the dough enough for the gluten to form a structure which can result in flat or dense bread.

The heat of a baking steel is necessary for getting a crispy bottom on a focaccia pizza. The cheese and sauce on top of the dough insulate the pan too much for the bottom to get crispy otherwise.

You can always substitute all-purpose flour for bread flour one for one in any recipe that calls for it. Your bread might not raise quite as high or have quite as much chew, if you are using all-purpose flour, but it will still be delicious and homemade and all the good things.

Focaccia made with high-protein bread flour produces the best results, but all-purpose flour will work as well.

SOME TIPS TO GET PERFECT HOMEMADE FOCACCIA

Let your dough rest. It is worth the overnight wait in the fridge. At a minimum 12 hours, but feel free to leave it in the fridge up to 48 hours with a well oiled piece of plastic covering the whole sheet tray so the dough doesn't dry out.

When freshly baked bread tastes bitter the reason is often that is was left to raise for too long in too warm a place. Alcohol may develop in it, which basically means that the dough has gone bad.

My bread tastes sour and yeasty

If your bread has a sour, yeasty flavour and smells of alcohol then you have either used too much yeast.or you may have use stale yeast or creamed fresh yeast with sugar.

Not just for aesthetic flair, dimpling the dough is a vital step because it expels air from the dough, preventing it from rising too fast, giving it that perfect crumb. That, combined with the weight of the oil, will prevent a puffed-up poolish that more closely resembles a loaf than a tasty crust.

Can you over knead focaccia? ›

Tips for the perfect homemade Focaccia.

Don't over-knead your dough– In the first step, make sure the dough has come together enough that it's sticky but not smooth, this will help to make the much desired air bubbles.

If mixed too long the dough can become loose and sticky. The water that was absorbed by the flour gets released back into the dough and the gluten structure breaks down. After this there is no way to fix it. It will be a loose, soggy, and sticky mass unable to hold in fermentation gasses.

Forgetting to dimple the dough

If you forget to dimple your dough and bake it, the dough will collapse when the bubbles burst, resulting in sad focaccia and a sad baker. To dimple your dough, oil your fingers or the end of a wooden spoon handle and gently poke the dough.

Can you overproof focaccia dough? You can definitely overproof focaccia, but it is difficult. There is so much oil in the dough, and very little sugar, so the yeast is "sleepy" or slow due to both of those elements and less likely to overproof.

Dimpling (aka poking holes) in focaccia helps to release gas and air, which helps your focaccia to maintain its signature flat look. At the same time, olive oil that's drizzled onto the foccacia is able to infuse into the dough for a truly wonderful flavour!

Using plain flour, as in Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, or even finer “tipo 00” flour as in The River Cafe Classic Italian Cookbook, will give you a softer, more tender crumb; while Richard Bertinet's mixture of strong bread flour and coarse semolina in his book Dough creates a more robust, ...

Many popular varieties of self-rising flour, like the ubiquitous White Lily brand, are made with bleached, low-protein soft wheat flour, which gives baked goods a super-light texture and tender crumb. In a pinch, however, all-purpose flour makes a fine substitute. It does not matter if it is bleached or unbleached.

Substituting all purpose flour in a sourdough recipe that specifically calls for bread flour is not always an even swap. You'll need to REDUCE the total amount of water first. All purpose flour absorbs less water than bread flour, which can make the dough too sticky to work with otherwise.

The best specialty off-the-shelf variety of flour for pasta is definitely bread flour since it has a lot of protein. If all you have is pastry flour you can still make it work, but it's ideal if you make an egg pasta dough rather than a water only dough since the eggs will provide that necessary protein and structure.