My Focaccia Journey

My name is Jon and this (ad-free) site is an overview of my journey to make incredible Focaccia. I don't say that I'm done with the journey, because there are still things I am going to try to do to improve the recipe! I'm experimenting with different ingredients (like different yeasts, and techiques, like cold ferementing). I will also use this site to link to additional recipes and places that I've found to that provide great information and have helped me become a better home baker.

Forno is the Italian word for Oven, and my goal is for great Focaccia to come out of the Oven! :)

You can read my journey below or jump right to the recipe here.

The pictures above are the current state of my journey. Baked and enjoyed in January of 2023.

My Journey

My first attempt to make Focaccia was back in May of 2019. I used the Anne Burrell recipe from Food Network (pictured below). Not sure I really got it right, but it tasted okay. Up until this point, my only other option that I knew of to get Focaccia was from Panera.

During the summer of 2019, I got it in my head that I needed to make baguettes. I tried to making them a few times. Mostly using this recipe from Joy of Baking. There was a video where she walked through all the steps, and it seemed simple so I gave it a shot.

I did get better, as you'll see a little further down.

After working on Baguettes, and learning more about baking bread, I thought I should go back and look at Focaccia, and boy am I glad I did. I came across this great recipe showdown that included the Anne Burrell / Food Network recipe, which scored the lowest of the four recipes in the comparison! Wait, maybe it wasn't just me! The other 3 recipes (out of four) all scored higher! The Anne Burrell recipe only scored a 5 out of 10!

The 2nd highest scoring recipe, which got a 9.5 out of 10, was from Alexandra Cooks.

This rivaled some of the best Focaccia I've ever eaten, and it was coming out of my oven!

Words can not express the joy I felt!

NOTE: I really have been meaning to go back and try the Samin Nosrat version (which got a 10/10),and I will at some point soon. I’ll update here when I do. Two things that stopped me from trying it off the bat was that I had learned from a friend (Stephen) about not using sugars with yeast, and this recipe called for honey. The other reason for not trying it was I thought the brine sounded odd. I will go back and make it at some point, or at least try the brine!

Anyway, I was done looking for a Focaccia recipe, or so I thought. This was damn good focaccia. I mean damn good. I was making this about once every couple of weeks, sometimes weekly, and very proud of myself.

Between this and finally getting some good baguettes (see below), I was building a bit of bread-baking confidence.

Part of what was giving me some confidence were the French Baguettes I learned to make from the Bread Bakers Apprentice (technically, they’re called Pain a l’Ancienne).

The recipe for these baguettes was actually I how I found the book. There were several baguette recipes that I read online that referenced Peter Reinhart (the author). These baguettes use the cold fermentation technique, and the book in general taught me a lot about bread baking.

One of the main lessons I learned was that the two most important factors are Time & Temperature.

The Anne Burrell Focaccia and Joy of Baking Baguette recipes that I was using before were both done in less than 1 day (4 or 5 hours), so how on earth could I have good bread in that short amount of time? :)

Things started clicking for me.

From my very first batch of the Pain a l’Ancienne (baguettes), I could tell a massive difference in the quality of my bread, and after spending time really learning to shape baguettes, I was turning out some good bread (see above).

And then I made the best bread I’ve ever made in my life. Ciabatta. I'm including pictures from two different batches below, both tasted amazing!

I got the recipe from Brian Lagerstrom on YouTube.

Brian’s video channel is a treasure trove of awesome recipes, and the instructions he gives make it super simple to follow.

I could not believe how great this bread turned out. I still recall taking the first batch out of the oven, and looking at the beautiful crust, the wonderful aroma, and listening to the crackle as the crust continued to tear. I couldn’t wait to slice into it. The bread was light and airy, filled with wonderful holes. Again, this was the best bread I’ve made in my life. I couldn’t believe I made this delicious bread.

I now had three great recipes: Focaccia, Ciabatta, and Baguettes.

The Ciabatta is probably the most time consuming, and was a little tricky the first time, but it was overall the best tasting bread. Everything about it is just great. Not every batch turns out perfectly for me, I’m still learning, but overall it’s just amazing bread.

Oh, and I started making scones. I mention it here because one of the types of scones I make are Cinnamon Apple Raisin scones and there is a variation in Focaccia recipes in Bread Bakers Apprentice that suggests making raisin focaccia, which I do. And trust me, you have to try it! It’s savory and sweet and just delicious. It’s the best raisin bread I’ve ever had. I’ll include a recipe at the end here, but basically it’s just adding a cup of raisins, some cinnamon, and sprinkling Sugar in the Raw on top of the bread instead of the flaky sea salt.

At some point in the early fall of 2022, we learned about a small Italian grocery store in St. Petersburg, FL, Mazzaros (if you’re ever in the area, stop by to check it out), it's about 35 minutes from our house. Our friends raved about it, so we decided to try it out. You know, there is an old saying, Ignorance is bliss, and truer words might never have been spoken. I was pretty happy with my Focaccia, but then I bought some from Mazarros and realized that I still had some room to improve what I was doing.

The Focaccia wasn’t the only bread we bought there. We also got some Ciabatta and it was really, really good as well. I actually prefer the Ciabatta that I’ve been baking to the stuff from Mazarros, but buying it there is certainly much easier than baking it! LOL! The nice thing about the bread from Mazarros is that they don’t contain anything other than Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast and Olive Oil. No preservatives.

The Focaccia from Mazarros is wonderful. It’s light and airy and has great flavor. They’re sold in small round loaves, perfect for making sandwiches. The main difference between the Focaccia that I’ve been making and theirs is that mine is a more dense. It’s not as airy and light, if that makes sense? I started wondering, maybe there are different types of Focaccia? It turns out, there is!

A quick google search is all it takes to start to learn that there are indeed many different types, and it seems they're regional. One of interesting things that I learned during my research so far is that there is a similar type of bread to Focaccia called Pizza Bianca that is sold in Rome, and it seems it’s quite a popular thing.

There is a great article on Serious Eats about it.

I tried to make it once, but messed up something really dumb and haven’t gone back to try it again (yet). Long story short, I combined the fermenting, shaping, proofing steps together and ended up with a subpar outcome. It was dumb, I know. :) My thought was that if I just let it ferment in the pan, I would save the step of stretching it out, and minimize the amount that I degassed the dough. Lesson learned.

The good news is that mistakes help us learn, and I learned something! No shortcuts to great bread!

I can’t believe that over the course of a week I didn’t take a single picture of it. Ugh! LOL! Next time! :)

It was really good. It was different than other Focaccia’s I’ve had, but again, it was really good. The most important thing it did was further drive my curiosity. The crust was crispy, the crumb was chewy. Considering Switzerland borders Italy, I seriously considered taking a day trip down to Italy, but never managed to it (I’m looking at flights to Italy now).

I started looking around for other other Focaccia recipes and came across this one from The Mediteranean Dish.

What caught my attention right away was the Biga. The Ciabatta recipe used a Biga, so what about using it for the Foacaccia!? I did, and wow!

This is the recipe that I’m using now (slightly altered from the original, which is great). I deviate from the original in a couple of ways.

1. I don't refrigerate my Biga (especially in cooler months of the year)

2. I don't dimple the dough as much as they suggest

I have tried to add a cold fermentation step, but found it unecessary. To test this, I did the intitial fermentation and strength building as called out in the initial recipe, and then moved the dough to the frig overnight, and then proofed the dough as described. It didn't really make that big a difference, so I'm skipping that from now on.

What I haven't tried yet, and is on my list, is an Autolyse step (where you hydrate the flour without the salt). This is another thing that is done in the Ciabatta recipe and is also called out in this other Focaccia recipe I found - and that recipe is an absolute treasure trove of incredible information, I learned a lot from reading it and it's where I got the idea to try cold fermenting my foaccia dough.