Focaccia

Focaccia is a flat oven-baked Italian bread product similar in style and texture to pizza dough. It can be used as a side to many meals or as sandwich bread.@afterunicooking made this wonderful variation and in her opinion “the beauty of focaccia lies (to a large part) in the choice of olive oil.”Here is what you need to make one large tray of this Italian speciality.

INGREDIENTS:

7 g dry yeast (1 package)

350 ml water

500 g white flour

10 g salt

Organico Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Toppings of your choice, for example cherry tomatoes, rosemary, sea salt, potatoes, olives, onions, garlic etc.

METHOD:

Add the dry yeast to the water (it should be at room temperature so the yeast can work best). Let this sit for around 10 minutes.

Put the flour and salt into a big mixing bowl.When the yeast-water mixture has been set aside for 10 minutes, mix it with the flour and salt in the bowl.Knead this with your hands, cover with a towel and let it sit for another 10 minutes. By letting it sit, you allow the dry ingredients to soak up the yeast mixture completely before continuing with the process.

After 10 minutes sprinkle 10 ml of olive oil onto the dough. Knead it very well until everything seems smooth, then form to a big ball.

Cover the dough with a towel again, place it in a warm spot and let it rise for 1-2 hours.

Then take a baking tray and grease it with olive oil.Spread the dough mixture carefully so that it fills up the entire tray. The layer should be about 2 cm thick.

After spreading, cover the tray with a towel and wait another 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to around 220° C.Meanwhile use your fingers to make holes into the dough.@afterunicooking usually does 8 lines of 4-5 holes each.

Cover the top of the dough with olive oil (a thin layer all over is perfect).Then add your desired toppings.

Finally put the tray in the oven and bake until golden brown (takes around 20-30 minutes, but this of course depends on the oven).

When your focaccia is baked, let it cool down and cut it into squares.

Enjoy!