Focaccia Recipe with Roasted Red Peppers - Cookin' Canuck (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to great focaccia? ›

Let your dough ferment slowly (24 hours), and you'll have the best tasting focaccia ever (assuming you use only good flour, salt, water, yeast and good quality extra virgin olive oil, nothing else). In order to rise over 24 hours, you either need cold fermentation or very little yeast at the start.

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

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.

Because there is a greater edge-to-middle ratio when you bake focaccia in a loaf pan instead of a sheet pan (not to mention the loaf pan has higher sides), you're ensured a lot of crispy, cheesy bites.

Even if something is over proofed it is not ruined. An over proofed dough makes good focaccia.

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.

Thick or thin? The thickness of a focaccia can vary, too, but an authentic focaccia genovese should be rather thin, even if it needn't be quite as thin as my version presented here. So many non-Italian renditions of “focaccia” are more like bread in their thickness.

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, ...

After the first rise, many recipes call for the baker to deflate — or "punch down" — the dough. It's an important step: When the dough is punched down, the yeast cells are redistributed. They form a closer bond with the moisture and sugar, which aids fermentation and improves the second rise.

Dilute the dough: If you have enough ingredients, you can double or triple the rest of the dough ingredients to dilute the excess yeast. This will balance out the yeast and prevent it from overpowering the dough. 2. Add more flour: Gradually add more flour to the dough until it reaches the desired consistency.

Should you stretch and fold focaccia? ›

Note: The stretch and fold method is better suited than kneading for a high-hydration dough such as this because the dough is naturally sticky and this method reduces hand contact. Additionally, the stretch and fold will allow for an open crumb when baked because the air isn't pushed out of the dough.

It's a common mistake, especially for newer bakers. When there's too much flour and not enough liquid, the whole rising process is thrown off. The dryness of the dough will prevent the yeast or another rising agent from activating properly, leading to a stunted rise (or it may not rise at all).

This recipe, originally from Alexandra Cooks has been our go-to focaccia recipe. A pyrex glass casserole dish is perfect for a thicker bread that can be sliced for making sandwhiches.

Venetian focaccia is sweet, baked for Easter and resembles the traditional Christmas cake panettone. Sugar and butter are used instead of olive oil and salt. Focaccia barese, which is common in Puglia in southern Italy, is made with durum wheat flour and topped with salt, rosemary, tomatoes or olives.

Stretching and folding the dough

Take one side of the dough, stretch and fold bringing the dough to the opposite side of the bowl. Rotate the bowl one quarter and repeat another 3 times. (See video for details of the stretch and fold technique.)

With any baking, if the inside is done, but there isn't good color, the temperature needs to be higher with a shorter cook time. Similarly, if its got good color, but the inside is raw, you need to cook longer at lower temp.

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.

Flour: Flour with a high protein content (at least 11%) is essential for strong gluten formation leading to that fluffy texture we know and love!