If you’ve been trotting along with the various bread recipes that I’ve been sharing, you’ve made very little bother oat bread for sandwiches, special loaves of potato buttermilk, hot dog and hamburger buns for summer cookouts, beer bread with cinnamon butter for steak night, a warm slice of chocolate banana bread for breakfast and six different types of dinner rolls to suit the different flavors of meals they would accompany and even a gluten free dinner roll! Now, I’m so happy to be sharing our homemade focaccia bread recipe with you!
Each of these recipes are made by hand with natural ingredients. There’s nothing used that our great-grandparents couldn’t use 60 years ago.
And since each recipe calls for ingredients you would normally have in your pantry, you’re only out a quarter or so each loaf. If you only made each recipe once (not including all the variations of dinner rolls), you’ve already saved over $30.
Today folks, you can add focaccia to your repertoire and save another $7.
Focaccia is a type of flat bread, kinda like a thick, dense pizza. Many of us know it best as an option when we’re ordering sandwiches from a local shop, but it’s way too easy to make at home to ever buy again. Hence, we’re delivering this homemade focaccia bread recipe for your taste buds, to avoid the shop!
Ever.
In fact, it’s even easier than the very little bother oat bread.
I guess you could call this the incredibly very little bother focaccia. 🙂
Homemade Focaccia Bread Recipe
Like pizza, focaccia is often topped with olive oil, seasonings and a sprinkle of cheese. You can mop up tortilla soup with a nice thick slice of jalapeno cheddar (which we will be doing next week), or you can slice a large piece of rosemary Parmesan in half and make a killer beef pesto Panini (like we did last week).
So.Good.So.Easy.
Basic Focaccia with Four Variations
Delicious homemade focaccia fresh from the oven in roughly 2 hours. Four delicious variations to accompany any dinner cuisine.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 18 1x
- Category: Bread
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 tsp yeast
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 1 1/3 cup warm water
- 3 1/2 cups flour
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 Tbsp salt
- Sea salt for topping
- Herbs and Cheese for Topping (optional, see variations below)
Instructions
- Combine yeast, sugar and warm water in a large bowl or in a stand mixer and allow it to bloom, approximately 10 minutes.
- Add the remaining ingredients and knead by hand or with a mixer until dough is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.
- Pour dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide into two equal pieces. Place each piece into an oiled 9″ x 9″ glass pan. Gently push and punch the round of dough so that it reaches each corner and edge of the pan. Repeat for the second pan. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Cover the dough with a towel and allow to rise is a warm place for 1 – 1 1/2 hours.
- Drizzle olive oil over the top of each loaf and gently spread using clean fingers or a brush to cover the entire surface. Add sea salt and any other desired toppings and bake for 25 minutes, or until golden brown on the edges and surface.
- Remove pans from the oven; remove bread from the pans and allow to cool on a rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Notes
Recipe adapted from Joy of Cooking.
Nutrition
- Calories: 106
Keywords: focaccia bread recipe
There’s one little tidbit that makes this focaccia bread recipe very awesome, and if I share it, I’m officially jumping off the edge of the geek cliff and there’s no turning back.
So here I go without a parachute!
Once the dough is mixed, it rises in the pan it will be baked in.
Seemingly unimportant, but this means you can still use your mixing bowl while the dough rises!
If I’m spending a good bit of time in the kitchen, I like to maximize it. Extra chopping, prepping future meals, baking ahead. Having my mixing bowl available is HUGE. No longer does progress in the kitchen have to come to a halt because of a bowl!
See, geek-mania, lol.
This focaccia bread recipe as written is delicious, but just like the dinner rolls, you can tailor the recipe to suit your taste buds.
- Garlic & Basil – top with chopped fresh or roasted garlic and a generous sprinkle of dried basil
- Cheddar – top each loaf with 1/4 cup shredded cheddar (sharp works best)
- Rosemary & Parmesan – top each loaf with shredded parmesan and a generous sprinkle of dried rosemary
- Jalapeño Cheddar – before baking, top each loaf with 1-2 slices of fresh jalapeño pepper and 1/4 Tbsp of shredded cheddar cheese
- Black & Blue – add 1 tsp of ground pepper into the dough and before baking, sprinkle the top of the bread with blue cheese and lots of freshly ground pepper
Hi, I tried making this as a focaccia pizza (as referenced in your Best Pizza Dough post). I topped it with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and mushrooms. The dough didn’t taste like focaccia; just really thick, slightly crunchy bread. What might have happened? Here are the variations I made: subbed 1 cup whole wheat flour for 1 cup white flour, left dough out in the cookie sheet pan for almost five hours before cooking as I was interrupted. Would either of these differences have mattered?
Hi Kendall! Yes, both of those substitutions will matter, especially the rise time. 🙂
Thank you for replying.
I was able to get 2 recipes pinned by just tapping the picture. And then….doesn’t work any more. I’m on a cell phone, so hovering isn’t possible. Tapping causes the picture to go to the photo only page and lightly touching screen does the same thing. Holding the picture causes a menu screen to pop up. Don’t know what I did differently to get those two recipes to show the pin button.
Oh, well. Just the same, the recipes you post still look very delicious.
Curious as to why you have a link to pinterest (and I follow you), but then don’t have a pin button of any sort so that we can pin your posts. Seems like it defeats the purpose of following you.
I only have internet access through my cell phone and the pinterest app they have always crashes my phone, so it’s useless for pinning on sites where there is no pin button.
Would love to have the ability to pin your recipes.Will you add a pin button and then I can pin you directly?
Thanks!
Hi Darlene! If you hover over pictures, a “pin it” button should appear so you can share the posts. Thanks for sharing!!
I’m new to the baking scene and was wondering if I could make the dough in a bread machine on the dough setting, and then bake it per the recipe’s instructions? Also, how long should I bake it and at what temperature, if I put the dough in a 9×13 glass pan instead of two 9×9 pans? Thanks for your help!
Hi Tiffany! If your machine doesn’t have the rise, then yes you can do that. The bread only has one rise in this recipe, and it needs to be in the pan. To bake for one 9×13, the bake time should be roughly the same, maybe adding just a few minutes more? But it wasn’t a significant difference when I tested a larger batch. 🙂
Is it better to let the dough rise in the ice box over night ?
Hi John! I’ve never tried that before, but I’m sure it could work. Don’t be surprised though if the rise is pretty significant, since there’s only one rise in the entire recipe. 🙂
I just made this for the first time and used half AP and half white wheat flour. It wasn’t looking promising, so I decided to make another one with all AP flour. Well, they both came out delicious! As a matter of fact, my husband preferred the one with white wheat flour! 🙂
Great news Melissa, on both the loaves coming out nice, and your husband preferring the wheat flour! We really like the combination of partial whole wheat too. Have you tried spelt or kamut before? Delicious grains!
No, I haven’t but I want to! I don’t have a flour mill, and the pre-ground spelt and kamut seem pricey. Any suggestions on where to purchase it for a decent price?
I’d try Whole Foods bulk section. You can get just a pound or two and see if you like them, and see how fast you go through them. It’s much slower since it’s usually in combination with other flours. 🙂
Can you freeze this? Would you freeze it before or after baking? It looks yummy!
Yes, you can Amy! I would freeze after baking. I’ve frozen muffin batter, but not dough.
Thanks!
What about using white wheat flour to avoid using refined white flour? Do you think I would need to add more water?
Jennifer,
I’ve substituted white whole wheat flour for nearly all of the bread recipes for half of the flour listed and haven’t run into any problems yet. If you use all whole wheat flour, try sifting the flour first and possibly adding one tablespoon of vital wheat gluten (only if you have it). Another option would be to use butter instead of the oil (butter helps with the rise too) and let it rise a bit longer. White whole wheat isn’t as fickle as regular whole wheat, so there’s a really good chance it’ll come out great without any other changes. Please let us know how it turns out if you try it. I’m anxious to see how it would turn out, but I can only eat so much bread at a time, lol! ~Tiffany
Pinning and I absolutely cannot wait to give this a try – especially the jalepeno and cheese version 🙂
Thanks!
Your Focaccia sounds so delicious and it looks wonderful! I love the variations as well. And it is great to free up your mixing bowl 🙂
Thank you for your submission on Nourishing Treasures’ Make Your Own! Monday link-up.
Check back tomorrow when the new link-up is running to see if you were one of the top 3 featured posts! 🙂
pinned it!! cannot wait to try this.
Hope you enjoy it as much as we do Bethany 🙂
Oh my, this looks so comforting!
I would love to have you share this and/or any other recipe of yours at Wednesday Extravaganza – my Link Party with a special something. There is a pretty nice Giveaway going on this week too!
Can’t wait to see you there!
Thanks for the invite!
Visiting from On the Menu Monday. Love these variations–especially the jalapeno cheddar.
Thanks for visiting Michelle – that’s my favorite too!
Looks delicious. Extra points for being able to let the dough rise in your pan.
Thanks Mary Katherine. 🙂