Sourdough Focaccia

Recipe:

Mixing: Mix the flour, levain, salt and water until there are no lumps of dry flour. Cover the dough and let it rest for 30 minutes.

Folds: Over the next 2 hours, give the dough 4 folds. Here is an example of how to fold the dough. Make sure to use wet hands before touching the dough. The dough will come together more with each fold and by the 4th fold you should notice a few bubbles, but the dough will not have risen much.

Transfer and cold proof: After your folds are done, liberally oil the pan you plan to use for baking. Put the dough in and cover the entire dough in oil. Cover the pan and put it in the fridge until the next day.

Final proof and bake: The next day, take the dough out of the fridge 4 hours before you plan on baking it. The dough can look different and will spread out a bit, but don’t expect it to have risen much in the fridge. Half an hour before you plan to bake, preheat the oven to 425. After being at room temperature (between 68-72 degrees) for 4 hours, the dough should have doubled and will jiggle when you shake the pan. If your kitchen is very cold, let the dough rise for a total of 5 hours. If your kitchen is very warm, above 74 degrees, cut the final rising to 3 hours. You may have to make this recipe a couple of times to find the sweet spot for your climate. Right before baking, drizzle a bit of oil over the top of the bubbly dough and dimple the dough. This is to redistribute the gasses in the dough, if you skip this step the focaccia will have one or two large air holes and the rest will be more dense. After dimpling, put it in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Sprinkle with sea salt immediately after baking.

The best thing about focaccia is the contrast of the super crispy and oil scented crust and the soft and airy interior. If you do not bake it long enough it won’t have a crispy bottom crust. I encourage you to bake it towards the bottom of the oven so the bottom crust sufficiently browns.

Notes:

• Optional when adding toppings: Before dimpling the dough, sprinkle your toppings over the dough. Then dimple the dough, slightly pushing in the toppings. If you do not push the toppings into the dough, they are more likely to fall off after baking.
• Doubling the recipe: It is all the same except it will need an additional 5-10 minutes of baking.
• Making a cute design with toppings: Keep in mind that the toppings will change color and move as they bake. It will not look as pretty as before baking! To make a really pretty focaccia garden scape, use a lot of contrasting colors and push ingredients deep into the dough. Think about the spacing. Patterns also turn out really cute!
• To bake the same day: Instead of putting the dough into the fridge after folds, leave the dough on the counter for 2 hours. Then transfer it into the oiled pan, and let it final proof in the pan until it’s doubled in size. The amount of time this takes depends on the temperature of your kitchen, but it should be between 2-6 hours.

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