Garden Focaccia, Fast or Slow, Big or Small

This springy garden focaccia, dimpled and infused with olive oil, is decorated with lots of vegetables (not just a sprinkling) and coarse, crunchy salt. It’s fast due to a condensed rise time. Easy and beautiful, it can make a showy appearance on your dining table tonight as focaccia art with little effort and lots of fun. Make it big or small, fast or slow!

There are a million recipes out there for focaccia, so you may ask “why another?” In multiple recipes over the years for focaccia and other breads, I’ve read the note that often says something like “or, if you don’t have the time, just leave the dough to rise for an hour”. This has always perplexed me, and stayed in the back of my mind. I am a curious cook, who researches, tests, and persists, in pursuit of solving a cooking problem. For me, the cooking problem here is how to make a delicious but fast and easy focaccia bread, when I haven’t allotted much time and want it ready the same day.

This recipe is the result of four years of pushing the limits on a yeasted focaccia recipe, whereby the least amount of rise time is employed, and a tasty, bouncy focaccia bread is the result! Below you can read a few pointers as to how this works, without me getting all science-y. If I’m anything, I’m good at distilling key information that helps me to understand a problem, in this case, a recipe, so that it succeeds. I’ve worked through a few variations I share here such as the result when it rises longer, and splitting the dough in half for two smaller round loaves, but it’s always topped with beautiful, glistening, caramelized vegetables that add so much flavor.

Why this recipe works

• The rise: my hack is to use a low heat from the oven to allow the dough to rise quickly, without killing the yeast, opposed to 8 hours on the countertop or longer time overnight in the fridge. The mere suggestion of this as a way to speed up rising, in various bread recipes I’ve read over time, was all that was needed for me to take the ball and run with it. It works.
• Dough hydration (a.k.a. the amount of water used): the dough contains a high ratio of water to flour (dare I say, as much as 86%, when I’ve read 65% is ideal) which allows the dough to develop the signature “open crumb” of focaccia without as much rise time.
• Olive oil: Olive oil is a key ingredient for making focaccia. Interestingly, it isn’t part of the initial dough mix, but rather, coats the dough as it rises. The oil very literally, allows the dough to relax w/out kneading.
• Options: use the quick rise hack, or leave it to rise overnight. Bake a large rectangular focaccia that serves 12, or divide the dough in half for two round bakes, or one for now and one for 1-3 days later.

Creating Focaccia Art

• Raw or cooked vegetables: sautéed, almost caramelized vegetables can be used to top the focaccia in a decorative way, as can fresh cut, raw vegetables. The look and taste is a bit different, depending on which vegetables you choose.
• Brushing vegetables with olive oil: if using raw vegetables to top the focaccia, I recommend brushing over them lightly with olive oil. This will help them develop color and flavor in the high heat of the oven.
• Vegetable choice: when choosing vegetables for focaccia art, I consider what the sliced version will look like, and further, I consider how I want to create the vegetable art.
• Type of decorative design: I tend to repeat a pattern, but others like to create a landscape of flowers, as if you are looking head on at stems and blossoms rising up from a garden. Either works, though a repetitive pattern can be easier, in my opinion, where you just have to think about a group of colors and shapes to repeat across the top of the dough. See below for two types of patterns you could create:

Above: whether you create a spiral design like at left or a radial design like at right, special attention can also be paid to the shades and colors and how they are placed (i.e. at left the greener leek slices are together followed by the white slices). Arranging by color as well as pattern creates a pleasing arrangement that is easy on the eyes.

Ingredient notes

• Instant yeast: with the intention of creating a risen dough on the same day as cooking the focaccia, I use instant yeast. It makes sense to use the faster rising yeast for faster rising dough, that is also easiest to work with (no proofing in lukewarm water with honey is needed).
• All purpose flour: you can certainly substitute bread flour, and I’ll update the post with results for that. I have seen it specified in many recipes, though, so I know it’s possible. It has more gluten and more protein, so maybe it creates a springier focaccia.
• Salt: I’ve learned a lot over time about the types of salt. I use sea salt exclusively and it is the finest ground salt I have learned. If you use Diamond kosher which many professional chefs swear by, see notes for different measurements, since the crystals are larger. Morton kosher crystals a smaller than diamond, but larger than sea salt crystals, so I’ve provided the differing amounts, depending on which you use.
• Olive oil: since it is a key ingredient that you will really taste, I suggest an extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) that isn’t bitter. Sometimes this can be harder to find than you might imagine. Just a note, in case you are looking to add to your pantry. Otherwise, use what you have.
• Vegetables: I have used some of the vegetables I thing caramalize and look great, such as smaller heirloom and cherry tomatoes, leeks and shiitake mushrooms. Honestly the shiitakes are so good, I plan to completely cover my next focaccia with just them, and herbs and will update this post with a photo when I do! Colored sweet peppers and onions would be great (and I use in the rectangular focaccia at the bottom of the post) as would whole, halved or crushed olives. Yum.

Above: you can see that I’ve taken great care in how I sliced all the veggies so that they look pretty when laid on top of the dough.

Step-by-step instructions

Mixing the no-knead focaccia dough couldn’t be simpler and is why I, a beginner baker, was drawn to it as a baking project. Simply mix the dry ingredients, add the water and mix with a spoon until the dry streaks of flour are gone, but don’t over mix.

Once the dough is mixed it will still look shaggy as shown below at left. Use the spoon to hold the dough aside and pour in 2 tbsp of olive oil. Release the dough, turn, and rotate it to coat it with the oil, then cover with a cloth.

Once the dough has risen (see recipe card for using my warm oven hack to speed up the rise), it should have doubled in size and when you poke the surface with a finger, an indentation should remain a little, showing that you’ve released some air.

Pour the risen dough into the prepared pan (see recipe card) and leave to rise at room temp or warm oven again, until doubled, about one hour more.

Now it’s time to cut your veggies and decorate the focaccia. You can follow my suggested designs above or create your own. Don’t space out the veggies too much, because, as you can see below, they shrink back when cooked, and the goal here is to have a focaccia with lots of veggies on top once baked, not just a few bits here and there.

Above and below: you can see how closely I laid the veggies for the radial design and what the design looks like when the focaccia is baked.

You’ll bake the focaccia in a very hot, preheated 450 degree oven, and even with that high temp, the round or larger rectangular pan of dough will take up to 30 min to bake and turn golden. The high hydration of the flour contributes to the long bake time (relative to the high oven temp).

Slice and enjoy with more flaky sea salt right away, serve at table once cooled and/or reheat the next day for deliciousness.

Tips for making this recipe

• Spacing of vegetables: try to really jam the veggies close to one another, so that the finished focaccia is full of caramelized veggies. If you space the raw veg out on the dough, they will be even farther apart when cooked, and there won’t be as much to taste.
• Slicing and choice of vegetables: if you are excited for the whole focaccia art aesthetics, then take a bit of time to chose your veggies in the right sizes and colors to yield slices you can decorate well with! You can also just sprinkle sauteed veggies like shown below across the dough (though I insisted on creating flowers of course 😂)
• Using a warm oven for the rises: my rising hack involves heating the oven to 160 ish (the “keep warm” setting), opening it up so it gets below 120 (temp, above which, yeast dies), then closing door on the dough to rise inside. If this feels too fussy or you are afraid you won’t keep the temp low enough, you can also preheat by just turning the light on in the oven and leaving it on while the dough rises in the otherwise, turned off oven. This seems to get the temp up above 80 degrees, which will be warmer than room temp, but without the worry of overheating the yeast. Also, if it’s warm outside, but your house is air conditioned, you can put the dough outside to rise in the 85-100 degree natural heat, covered of course.
• Yeast: if you happen to only have active dry yeast on hand versus the instant yeast, then see recipe notes for subbing that in. No problem, I’ve used both with similar results.

Variations of this recipe

• Two round focaccias: as per the rest of the post, I’ve featured the dough divided and baked in a 10″ cast iron skillet. You can cook both rounds at once, or leave one half of the dough in the fridge 1-3 days before using. If you do that, your 2nd rise takes longer because you are bringing the dough up to room temperature before it will rise more.
• One large focaccia: below you can see how a beautiful, large, rectangular focaccia can be achieved with an 11″ x 17″ or similar sized sheet pan. Make sure to butter and oil as per recipe card, regardless of what pan you use. A glass lasagna pan can also be used (really be sure to butter well), for a thicker focaccia, that may take a bit longer to cook.
• Potatoes: I love to add potato slices onto a focaccia, but they should be pre-cooked, and brushed with oil like the other veggies ideally. This can make the focaccia a heartier side or meal or bread to serve alongside a soup.
• Longer rise: If you aren’t convinced you’ll get a good rise or tasty focaccia from this faster rise method, feel free to put the dough aside all day or in the fridge overnight. The spiral decorated focaccia in this post was left in the fridge overnight and honestly it did not yield a taller, more bubbly result than the same day rise. When all is said and done the super bubbly photos and videos you see online that look so crazy seem to mostly be for show, not for more flavor. Admittedly, though, if you used sourdough starter, you might get closer to that bubble size with a more tangy flavor. I hope to try it one day!