Focaccia
Ingredients
Dough
- 225 ml Lukewarm water
- 2 Tbsp Olive oil
- 400 g Strong White Flour or T65. Optionally use 200g flour + 200g Fine semolina
- 7 g Fast Action Dried Yeast or 15g Fresh Yeast & 1 tsp sugar
- 6 g Fine Sea Salt
- 10 g Dried Rosemary or Fresh Rosemary chopped
For the tray
- 1 tsp Ground Sea salt
- 1 tsp Olive oil
For the top
- 80 ml Water
- 80 ml Olive oil
- Sea salt crystals
- 2 Sprigs fresh rosemary stem removed
Instructions
- If using fresh yeast then put 50ml of the water into a bowl and disolve 1 tsp of sugar in the water and then mix in the yeast gently. Leave for 10 minutes to activate.
- If kneading by hand or with a stand mixer
- tip the flour in the bowl and make a well in the centre of the flour. Measure the olive oil into the centre well. Put the salt to one side and add the yeast to the opposite side then add the water. Mix the ingredients and knead for 7 minutes with a stand mixer, or 10 minutes of kneading by hand.
- Oil a large bowl. Put in the dough and cover with a cloth. Leaving the dough to rise for about an hour until it has doubled in size.
- If using a bread machine, add the ingredients to the pan as intructed for your type of bread machine: usually all wet ingredients first and then dry. Mix the dough using the bread machine’s dough setting. This knead the dough and will finish after the first dough rise.
- Prepare a baking tray by brushing liberally with olive oil and sprinkling salt all over the tray.
- After the dough has risen the first time, empty the dough from the bowl on to the tray and flatten and spread as far to the sides of the tray as you can but do not go right to the edges as an irregular shape will look better when finished. Cover with a cloth and allow to rise.
- After the 2nd rise, flatten the dough once more to the edges of the baking tray and press holes into the dough with your finger at regular intervals about 4 or 5 cm apart.
- Strip the rosemary leaves off the by pushing down the stem in the opposite direction of leaves. This should produce small clumps of 3 or 4 leaves each. Push the rosemary leaves into the holes and sprinkle any leftover over the surface.
- Make an emulsion by putting the equal parts of water and olive oil with the course sea salt into a jar and shaking until the liquid is well mixed and gone white. Pour this all over the top of the dough, brushing in where necessary.
- Cover with cloth and allow to rise again.
- When the dough has risen for the third time, bake in the oven at 200°C (Conventional oven) or 190°C (Fan oven) for 25 minutes. The top should sound hollow when tapped with a utensil.
- Allow to cool on a cooling rack. Sprinkle Extra Virgin Olive Oil over the Focaccia before serving.
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