My favorite focaccia. Recipe below. Photos: Kathleen Osteen
Focaccia is the delicious dimpled flatbread perfect for no-fuss summer baking. Today, Kathleen Osteen who has brought us her fabulous hummus, grown-up Spaghetti-Os, and chicken meatballs shares her personal focaccia journey. Her go-to recipe means summer bread baking will be anything but boring. Enjoy! - Anne
I ASPIRE TO BE A SOURDOUGH GIRLIE—the one on TikTok who effortlessly tends to the starter and bakes loaves for days all while remembering to water her thriving houseplants. Unfortunately I cannot keep a sourdough starter—or a houseplant—alive.
Outside of focaccia, I’m not incredibly versed in the bread department. In fact, I remember standing at my kitchen island watching my laptop screen as my mom taught bread classes to our friends and family members via Zoom in April 2020.
My first go at focaccia in 2020
Fast-forward to September 2020 when I saw a juicy tomato-topped focaccia pop across my Instagram feed. (Thank you, Rachel Karten!) With a wide open calendar and ripe tomatoes on the counter, I had my quarantine activity-of-the-day secured. Later that day the same kitchen counter bore witness to three adults absolutely DEVOURING every last morsel of that giant slab of warm focaccia with tomato juices running down our arms.
Almost four years and what feels like a lifetime later, I now make focaccia on what I would say is a pretty regular basis.
Breadmaking is intimidating with all its intricacies and variables, but focaccia is fairly resilient. It would be fair to say the best thing about focaccia is that it's pretty darn hard to mess up. After revisiting some favorite focaccia recipes this past week, I have come to this conclusion - at the end of the day, all focaccia is good focaccia.
I look back at that fall 2020 tomato-topped batch and cringe at the lack of bubbles and height compared to what I bake today. I’m sure it had proofed on the counter so we could enjoy it the same day, whereas now I always work a day or two ahead for more flavor and better texture.
Dimpled Dough Ready to Bake / Example of Focaccia with Toppings
Plus, a slab of focaccia is a blank canvas—keep it plain, top it with herbs and veggies, slices of tomatoes, stuff it with cheese, it’s ready to get weird. Just make sure to liberally cover it in flaky sea salt.
Building Focaccia Slab Sandwiches
Park Picnic Focaccia Sandwiches
Focaccia can play a supporting role or easily take center stage. This week’s tester slabs made their way to neighbor’s doorsteps for tasting notes while others made some epic park picnic sandwiches. I’m hoping next week won’t be too late into spring to find some ramps so I can make a batch of ramp butter to accompany thinly-sliced focaccia.
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Anything Alexandra does is well explained and executed. This was my go-to recipe to share with friends as I started to understand the process a bit better.
Caroline’s mesmerizing bubbly focaccia videos made their way across my feed last May. In the year since, her follower count has soared while documenting content behind-the-scenes at her Baltimore/DC meal prep company and sharing recipes on her newly-launched Substack covering “Everything You Need to Know About Everything I Made This Week.” Caroline loves to play around with flavors for her weekly focaccia offering - including sweet ones! I am constantly inspired by her sweet takes on the traditionally savory bread.
My focaccia recipe, which you can find below, is a slightly modified version of Caroline’s recipe. This week, I tested Caroline’s exact recipe in two variations—one using bread flour and one using all-purpose. I did this to show that bread flour holds more structure and bubbles—due to the higher protein content—but was actually surprised to see very little difference between the two. If anything, the one with all-purpose flour was our favorite.
I’m not going to lie, this one was added to the roster this week. I hadn’t tested or even heard of Lacey’s recipe, but was intrigued by the light dough billowing out of her pans in videos online. Verdict? If I didn’t already have a strong lineup it would have been great. But it didn’t achieve the same crusty crunchy edges as the others and ultimately was least favorite in testing, but still delicious.
My Focaccia (recipe to follow)
The method is true to Caroline Anderson’s focaccia, but I use a blend of bread flour and all-purpose along with a slightly higher hydration.
I actually prefer to double this recipe and bake it in a full-size sheet pan, but I share the smaller version in case you have fewer bread eaters.
If I can stretch and fold this dough by the pool with a timer set in 20 minute increments, you can nail focaccia this summer. Summer, to me, is about bright, colorful, flavorful food and plenty of communal dinners—at a table or around a pool—and dishes that can be both thrown together quickly and transported easily, allowing more time for us to enjoy ourselves.
Here are other things that might trick your friends into being impressed when in actuality they are just eating your repurposed leftovers:
Sunday Night Grilled Pizzas
I had some “Tipo 0” Flour from Mr. Aaron’s Goods I had been itching to get into. If you are in Nashville and still sleeping on this place, wake up! Not only did this little family-run COVID bagel pop-up turn into wholesale bagel and fresh pasta production for restaurants across town, but they just added dine-in service for breakfast and lunch. Check out what goods they have in their case - sometimes it’s freshly-stretched mozzarella, sometimes high-quality imported olive oil or specialty flours. Whatever Mr. Aaron and his family are putting out, it’ll be delicious.
Clockwise: (1) Pizza Dough, (2) Plain Cheese Pizza (3) Pesto, Confit Tomato + Sliced Mozzarella (4) Local Spinach + Mascarpone Cream Sauce with Pecorino, roasted garlic and lemon.
I decided to give Roberta’s pizza dough a try, incorporating a mixture of all-purpose and the specialty pizza flour, and increasing the recipe by 50% to yield three pies. This recipe appears in The New York Times, so you’ll need a subscription to access it. But if you aren’t bursting at the seams to bust out your flour collection, don’t. Anne has a great recipe for pizza dough using regular all-purpose flour in her book Skillet Love.
Summertime pizza is perfect in its imperfection. Our three pies were each a bit misshapen, ranging in flavors and ended up stretching just enough to feed five people rather than the intended three. All different, all delicious and none executed “perfectly”—just as a summer night should call for.
Grilled Tomato Confit
We aren’t a huge “red sauce” family. Don’t hate us for it! So we don’t usually have marinara on hand unless I’ve frozen a batch scooped from an Italian market.
For pizza night, I threw some small tomatoes in a grill safe pan along with crushed garlic cloves, lemon zest, olive oil, salt, freshly-ground black pepper and basil, covered with foil and placed on a very hot grill. After a few minutes I turned the grill down to low, kept covered and knocked out some focaccia folds by the pool. If I’m honest I’m not sure how long it was before I opened the grill to check on the tomato mixture, but I’m guessing about 15 or so minutes. At that point when I uncovered the pan I saw softened tomatoes that had begun to break down but hadn’t completely lost their round shape. I removed from the grill and kept the pan covered until it had cooled.
The tomatoes were a great topping on pizza, as was the addition of garlic confit in the mayo on our focaccia slab sandwiches. I like to keep the oil in the fridge to add a drizzle of bold tomato flavor here or there.
I prepared a double batch for teachers at my daughter’s school, splitting the batter between whatever small-ish containers I could find and popping them in the oven.
The cakes were packed with peak-season Florida blueberries while a few more berries were cooked down on the stove with lemon juice to make the liquid needed for a quick but dazzling hot-pink glaze. Don’t waste any opportunity to make your food POP, we eat with our eyes first and tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. I say, take the few extra minutes to make your food look appealing, not just edible. Long summer evenings allow us the time (and lighting!!) to enjoy the fruits of our labor.
Two last things I’m leaning into summer with…
Jacksonville-based Summa Salts is a seasoning brand formulated with specially-curated blends of locally-grown herbs and peppers. I’ll admit, I was a tad dismissive at first, but now have a dedicated drawer full of Summa Salts directly next to my stove for quick access. I think Thai Basil is my favorite, but I must say we blew through the Seafood Blend in record timing, seasoning anything from fish to chicken to veggies.
I’m not a hard seltzer gal, I believe they rose in popularity the summer I was *very* pregnant and have generally aired on the sweet side for my taste. I’m already longing for July when I head up to Tennessee and can restock on Nashville-based Maypop Water’s hop-infused sparkling water. I realize this is niche and not really a direct comparison to hard seltzers, but it is truly one of my favorite beverages for sipping while floating in a pool.
What about you? What easy ways are you leaning into summer in the kitchen?
Here’s what you need to make your focaccia life easier:
A Scale: Come on, commit! You would be surprised how much use you’ll get out of it and it helps massively to measure by weight - which is faster than pulling out all those measuring cups. A general rule of thumb is 120 grams of flour per cup of all purpose flour.
Gloves: I keep food-safe clear vinyl gloves on hand to keep mess at a minimum and cut down on clean up. I slip on a fresh pair each time I handle the dough for mixing, stretching or folding.
Parchment Paper: Unless you want to butcher your hard-earned bubbly focaccia to smithereens trying to detach the bottom from the pan, use parchment paper. I like to buy the pre-cut unbleached parchment sheets that come in a variety of sizes.
Bread Flour: Optional, but I find my favorite batches run between 1:1 and 2:1 bread flour to all purpose flour.
Good Olive Oil: You’re going to taste it, so use one that tastes good.
Flaky Sea Salt: Maldon flakes hit the dough just before it goes in the oven allowing for those salty, crispy edges we all like.
Makes a 8- by 12-inch rectangle or 10-inch round
Ingredients:
500 grams (2 cups + 1 Tablespoon) water
325 grams bread flour (2 2/3 cups + 2 teaspoons)
300 grams all-purpose flour (2 1/2 cups)
8 grams (2 1/4 teaspoons) kosher salt
5 grams (1 2/3 teaspoons) instant dry yeast
Olive Oil, for drizzling
Hydrate the dough: I almost always mix by hand for a batch this size, but if using a stand mixer, attach your bread hook. Add the water to the bowl first, followed by flour. Mix on low setting until flour and water are just combined. If using your hands, add water followed by flour into a medium sized mixing bowl. Use your hand to pinch the flour and water together until just combined. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel and allow to rest for 30 minutes.
Add salt and yeast: After resting, remove the cover and sprinkle in salt and yeast together. If using a stand mixer, mix for 3 minutes on medium speed, or until the dough is fully combined. If using your hands, this will take closer to 5 minutes to thoroughly mix. Make sure that there aren’t pockets of unincorporated salt and yeast. Remove the dough from the bowl with a bowl scraper and drizzle olive oil into the bottom of the bowl. Return the dough to the bowl or an oiled rectangular baking dish.
*You should proof the dough in a vessel that is the same shape as your baking dish. So, if you plan to bake in a rectangular baking sheet, you should allow it to proof in a rectangular dish like a casserole dish. If you are going to bake the focaccia in a round cast iron pan, you should allow it to proof in a bowl. This will make it easier for the dough to fill the baking vessel. Also make sure your vessel is very well oiled and large enough for the dough to multiply.
Start stretch + folds: One at a time, stretch a side of the dough into the air, folding it into thirds like a letter and then flip the dough so the fold-side is down. Cover with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel and allow to rest on the counter for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, fold into thirds again and turn the dough fold-side down. Replace the cover and allow the dough to rest for another 20 minutes. Repeat this two more times, for a total of 60 minutes and 4 folds, before putting the dough in the refrigerator overnight.
The process will go like this: - Add yeast and salt, transfer to oiled container, fold into thirds and cover - Let sit 20 minutes - Fold into thirds and cover - Let sit 20 minutes - Fold into thirds and cover - Let sit 20 minutes - Fold into thirds final time and cover. Place dough, completely covered, in the refrigerator overnight.
Final Proof: The next day, take your dough out of the refrigerator. Choose your baking vessel, line with parchment paper and coat generously with olive oil. This recipe yields a 8- by 12-inch rectangle or 10-inch round. (You’ll see I noted I prefer to double this recipe and bake on a parchment-lined full sheet pan.) Whatever vessel you choose, oil generously before adding your dough. If needed, lightly lift dough from underneath and spread out to the corners without disrupting bubbles too much.
Drizzle with more olive oil and cover once again. Allow to proof one last time on the counter for 45-60 minutes. The amount of time will depend on the temperature of the room. However, you will know it’s ready when you give the pan a little jiggle and the dough looks light and fluffy.
Bake: Preheat the oven to 425ºF, convection bake, if possible.
When the dough seems ready to bake, dimple the surface by pressing oiled fingertips into it, spreading fingers out and slightly jiggling as you press down. More bubbles should form as you do this.
Top with whatever toppings you’d like such as crushed olives and oiled herbs or simply with flaky salt like Maldon. Drizzle, yet again, with olive oil and place in the oven. *Make sure the oil isn’t too high on the sides of pan, you don’t want it to overflow. If possible, start on the bottom rack to improve browning on the bottom for about 12-15 minutes, then rotate to the top rack and continue baking until browned for a total bake time of about 20-25 minutes, depending on your oven. Carefully remove the bread from the pan and place on a wire rack to cool before slicing and serving.
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