I didn’t mean to get so carried away making focaccia over the last few months, but don’t I always say that? As if I forget how easily I get consumed with a very specific idea for what a recipe should be and cannot let it go, even when it’s past time to move on. As if it was someone else who made blueberry muffins 25 times one summer until she found what she was looking for. Thus, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised but I still am: I’ve made an obscene amount of focaccia this spring and summer trying to find the recipe I’ll want to use forever. Here are five things I learned along the way:
- For focaccia that’s brown and crisp on top, a shallow pan is best: (Like these rimmed baking sheets.) While my focacce sometimes brown and crisp decently in pans with taller sides, such as a cake pan, it’s never as good.
- It’s surprisingly hard to overbake focaccia: I know this sounds like madness, but for all intents and purposes, after 20 minutes in the oven, the bread is baked. But it doesn’t have a crunchy top and edges that hold, and I really like those. When I bake focaccia at least 30 minutes and often up to 35 or 37, not removing it until it’s the deepest golden brown on top, the texture is perfect: excellent edges but hydrated and chewy inside.
- No-knead is triumphant here: There are a lot of well-loved, well-reviewed, and no doubt phenomenal focaccia recipes around that apply the technique of “turns” to the dough — stretching and folding the dough to create a stronger dough with a more airy crumb. Yet, in side-by-side tests, I just didn’t find any significant improvement in texture or structure vs. when I didn’t bother kneading the dough. Perhaps it was my own user error. But perhaps it barely matters if, in the end, I love the way the no-knead method — i.e. the easiest and least fussy — comes out.
- Resist playing, hard as it is: Two things that are unfortunately wildly fun — punching down a dough after its first rise and dimpling the heck out of a focaccia with oiled fingertips — are not our friends here, and really take away from the final airiness we want in this kind of pan-baked bread. I had to rein in my impulses to play, dimpling only a few times, to get the focaccia you see here.
- Toppings shrink; be generous: While you can leave this focaccia plain, or just sprinkle it with sea salt and rosemary needles, my dream here was a somewhat loaded summer focaccia, and I topped mine with zucchini and potatoes. I’ve sometimes added matchsticks of salami, if everyone eats meat where I’m going. No matter how blanketed the focaccia seems going into the oven, everything on top is going to shrink over the baking time. More is more here.
The result is the kind of focaccia I think we should take anywhere and everywhere this summer — picnics, potlucks, and parks, barbecues and beaches. Or, we can have it for dinner with some burrata and snap peas, or with a pot of everyday meatballs. We could serve it with fresh ricotta and grilled vegetables or scrambled eggs and the first sungold tomatoes. It disappears so fast, you’ll have this recipe memorized in no time.
Focaccia with Zucchini and Potatoes
- 4 cups (540 grams) all-purpose flour
- 3 teaspoons (8 grams) kosher salt (I’m using Diamond brand; use half of any other), plus more for vegetables
- 2 1/4 teaspoons or 1 packet (7 grams) instant yeast
- 2 cups (475ml) lukewarm water (between 100 and 115°F, but warm-to-the-touch tap water is fine)
- 6 tablespoons (90ml) olive oil, divided, plus more as needed
- 8 ounces zucchini, sliced very thin
- 8 ounces Yukon Gold potatoes, full-sized or mini, sliced very thin
- 2 ounces salami, cut into thin strips (optional; not shown here)
- Fresh rosemary, to finish
- Flaky sea salt, to finish
Make the focaccia: Line a 9×13-inch pan or rimmed baking sheet (I use these but mine are very old) with a large piece of parchment paper that extends up the sides, pressed in. Drizzle parchment with 3 tablespoons olive oil and scrape risen dough onto it. Trying to not press any air out of the dough, use your hands, sliding them underneath a little, to gently stretch the dough once or twice towards the edges. No need to make it fill out the pan completely; it will get there on its own as it rises again. If you have one, coat a second 9×13-inch pan or rimmed baking sheet with olive oil and upend it over the focaccia pan to act as a lid for the rise. (If you don’t have one, use another large baking dish, like a lasagna pan. The dough needs room to grow.) Set aside for another 1 1/2 hours.
45 minutes to 1 hour later, prepare the toppings: Place sliced zucchini in one bowl and toss it with 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt. Set aside. Place sliced potatoes in a second bowl and toss them with 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Set aside. [This will soften the vegetables so they cook nicely.]
Assemble focaccia: Heat oven to 450°F. Drain zucchini and pat it dry on paper towels. Do the same with the potatoes. Carefully remove the pan covering the focaccia dough. Do not fret if the dough looks about to spill over the sides; it’s exactly right. Cover the focaccia dough with shingles of drained zucchini and potatoes (plus salami, if using), then sprinkle with rosemary needles, to taste. Drizzle focaccia with remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil and use your fingertips to dimple the dough several times — perhaps 20 finger impressions total. Resist over-dimpling or the focaccia becomes even, flat, and boring. Sprinkle all over with flaky sea salt.
Bake focaccia: For 30 to 38 minutes, or until a deep golden brown on top and at the edges. Keep an eye on it for the last 8 minutes and try to resist pulling it from the oven too soon. When it doesn’t brown enough, the edges soften too fast.
Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool for 5 minutes, if you can bear it. Slide the focaccia out of the pan and cut into squares [especially if you’re taking it somewhere; don’t you hate cutting up food on a picnic blanket with a plastic knife?]. Enjoy!
Leftover focaccia keeps at room temperature for a few days. Rewarming it in a 350-degree oven helps re-crisp the top.