Focaccia con lievito madre/sourdough
Equipment
- 30cm x 20cm baking tray
Ingredients
The Leaven
- 100 g White Sourdough Starter
- 50 ml Lukewarm water
- 50 g Strong White Flour
Dough
- 175 ml Lukewarm water
- 2 Tbsp Olive oil
- 350 g Strong White Flour
- 6 g Fine Sea Salt
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
Setting the leaven:
- Put the sourdough starter in the mixing bowl and add 50ml lukewarm water and 50g flour and mix thoroughly with a bakers whisk. Cover and leave to stand for 4 hours.
The Autolyse:
- Add the remaining water to the leaven and mix well with a baker's whisk or a fork.
- Add the flour, oil and salt and mix well with a spatula
- Cover and leave to stand for 60 minutes.
Mixing the dough
- Sprinkle salt on the surface. Wet your hand and squeeze the dough several times. You should feel the dough tighten. Cover and leave to stand for 60 minutes.
- Stretch and fold the dough. Repeat the stretching and folding a further 3 time turning the bowl a quarter of the way round each time. Cover and leave for a further 60 minutes.
- You can leave the bowl covered in the fridge overnight
Shaping in the tray
- Prepare a baking tray by brushing liberally with olive oil and sprinkling salt all over the tray.
- 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. Cover with a cloth.
- After 15 minutes, stretch the dough again to cover to the sides of the tray. Cover with linen cloth and leave to rise for 3 hours.
Baking
- Preheat the oven to 220°C/200°C(fan oven)/gas 7
- Press holes into the dough with your finger at regular intervals about 4 or 5 cm apart.
- Brush the surface liberally with olive oil allowing some to settle in the holes. Sprinkle with the course sea salt.
- 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. Cover with cloth until the oven is well heated to temperature.
- Uncover the baking tray and place in the middle of the oven. Bake in the oven at for 23 minutes. The top should sound hollow when tapped with a utensil.
- Remove from the tray and allow to cool on a cooling rack. Sprinkle Extra Virgin Olive Oil over the Focaccia before serving.
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