How to make Italian focaccia bread? Is there a classic recipe, cooking features. Focaccia with herbs, garlic, cheese, yeast-free, stuffed.
Focaccia is an Italian bread, a traditional flatbread that can be served with any meal. Classic focaccia is made from three main ingredients - wheat flour, water and olive oil, and it is baked in a circle - quickly and at high temperatures. But, of course, there are a lot of alternative recipes that involve replacing and adding other components, creating dough of different shapes and thicknesses. It is noteworthy that in modern Italy focaccia is considered the "progenitor" of pizza. In many ways, these products are very similar, and therefore there are good reasons for this version.
Features of cooking focaccia
Focaccia is one of the dishes that allow for huge variability in recipes, and this is the result not only of the migration of the national dish to other countries of the world, but also the intransigence of Italians in which cooking method can be considered the only correct one. In different regions of the country - their own classic focaccia recipe.
For example, in Genoa, it is a thin cake with olive oil, salt and onions. In Recco and Liguria, these are two layers of thin dough, between which there is a lot of cheese and finely chopped smoked sausage, all seasoned with hot spices. In Bari, focaccia is cooked with tomatoes and olives, while in Venice they like sweet focaccia, which is traditionally present on the table during Easter celebrations.
However, if we consider focaccia bread to be the prototype of modern pizza, it is not surprising that the variety of recipes is so huge. And it's not just the filling, Italian focaccia can be made from yeast or butter dough, it can be baked in an oven at a high temperature or in a standard oven, it can be round or rectangular, etc.
TOP 5 Italian Focaccia Bread Recipes
If you are thinking of making homemade focaccia, do not waste time looking for the only correct recipe, even Italians still could not find it. Choose whichever you like, and you can safely call the result obtained as a focaccia cake.
The easiest focaccia recipe
It is this simple recipe that is most often referred to as the classic Italian focacci recipe. To prepare it, you will need very few ingredients - flour, water, yeast, salt and olive oil.
- Caloric content per 100 g - 250 kcal.
- Servings - 6-8
- Cooking time - 2 hours
Ingredients:
- Flour - 350 g
- Water - 210 g
- Olive oil - 1 tablespoon
- Dry yeast - 7 g
- Salt - 5 g
- Sugar - optional
Step by step preparation of the simplest focaccia:
- Combine all dry ingredients - flour, salt, yeast and sugar.
- Pour in room temperature water, stir.
- Place the dough well, place in an enamel bowl and cover with a cotton cloth.
- Remove the dough in a warm place and leave for an hour. In winter, you can simply place it next to the battery, otherwise preheat the oven to 40-50 ° C and remove the dough into it.
- Put the risen dough out of a saucepan on a surface sprinkled with flour, knead well, roll it out.
- Brush the focaccia with olive oil and sprinkle with salt, preferably coarse.
- Bake at 200 ° C for 20-30 minutes.
You can enhance the flavor of the dish by adding traditional Italian herbs to this recipe: focaccio goes well with rosemary, basil, oregano. Sprinkle them over the dough along with salt or 5-10 minutes before the tortilla is ready. In the first case, the spices will saturate the cake better, and in the second they will retain more useful properties.
Focaccia with garlic
Another great and win-win combination is focaccia with garlic. If you love adding this spice to your dishes, be sure to make it one of the ingredients in Italian bread.
Ingredients:
- Flour - 270 g
- Water - 170 ml
- Garlic - 4 cloves
- Dill - 4 branches
- Olive oil - 60 ml
- Dry yeast - 4 g
- Sugar - 2 tsp
- Salt - a pinch
Step by step preparation of garlic focaccia:
- Chop the garlic finely.
- Heat oil in a saucepan, put garlic in it and fry until a pronounced smell appears.
- Heat the water (to about 35 ° C), add yeast and sugar, stir, leave for 20 minutes.
- Drain the "garlic" oil through a sieve, do not throw the garlic itself.
- Combine flour and salt, make a well in it and pour in water with yeast and sugar, and then garlic oil, mix well.
- Knead the dough for 5-7 minutes, transfer to a clean bowl, cover, put in a warm place for an hour.
- Roll out the finished dough, lightly grease with olive oil, sprinkle the remaining garlic, finely chopped dill, salt on top.
- Bake at 200 ° C for 20-25 minutes.
Thin garlic focaccia is ready! This tortilla is versatile, it can be both a main course and an addition to it. For example, Italian bread is ideal to serve with a puree soup and get a hearty lunch. You can also eat focaccia with pesto - a classic Italian sauce - for a hearty snack.
Focaccia with cheese
It will bring the tortilla closer to the pizza and at the same time make it more satisfying by adding to the recipe for Italian cheese focaccia.
Ingredients:
- Whole grain flour - 4 tbsp.
- Dry yeast - 1 tablespoon
- Hard cheese - 2 tablespoons
- Milk - 300 ml
- Olive oil - 3 tablespoons
- Egg - 1 piece
- Italian herbs - 1 tsp
- Dried garlic - 1/2 tsp
- Sugar - 2 tablespoons
- Salt - 1/2 tablespoon
How to prepare cheese focaccia step by step:
- Heat a couple of tablespoons of milk (the temperature should not be higher than 40 ° C), add a pinch of sugar and yeast, and leave for 15-20 minutes.
- In a separate bowl, add flour, salt, remaining sugar, and any dry seasonings.
- Pour water with yeast and sugar into the flour, add the egg and the remaining milk, mix well.
- Add olive oil and knead the dough, cover, transfer to a warm place for an hour.
- Roll out the dough, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with cheese.
- Bake at 200 ° C for 20-25 minutes.
It is important to note that traditionally such focaccia is prepared with parmesan, but in the absence of it, you can use any other hard cheese.
Focaccia yeast-free
If for some reason you avoid yeast dough, you might be interested in this recipe for how to make yeast-free focaccia. Please note that without using this ingredient, you will not violate the originality of the dish, in many regions of Italy it is precisely yeast-free focaccia that is prepared.
Ingredients:
- Flour - 250 g
- Curd cheese - 300 g
- Water - 120 ml
- Olive oil - 30 ml
- Salt - a pinch
Step-by-step preparation of yeast-free focaccia:
- Sift flour, add salt, stir.
- Mix water and oil separately.
- Make a well in the flour, pour in the water and oil.
- Rinse out the dough, leave for half an hour.
- Divide the dough into 2 parts, roll out thinly.
- Put cheese on the first part with a thin layer, cover with the second layer.
- Pinch the edges, lightly coat the top with olive oil.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes at 200 ° C.
As you can see, the recipe for yeast-free focaccia at home is no less simple than the recipe for yeast. It is noteworthy that in Italy, for the preparation of such a flatbread, they take Strakkino cheese, which is traditional for the Lombardy region, but it is very difficult to find it in Russia, so ordinary curd cheese will also work.
Stuffed focaccia
If you want to make a more original focaccia cake at home, be sure to use this recipe.
Ingredients:
- Flour - 400 g
- Water - 250 ml
- Trembling - 1 tsp
- Salt - 1 tsp
- Green onions - 200 g
- Olives - 300 g
- Cod fillet - 500 g
- Olive oil - 2-3 tablespoons
- Black pepper, herbs - to taste
Step by step preparation of stuffed focaccia:
- Put yeast and salt in warm water (35-38 ° C).
- Sift the flour, make a depression in it and add water with salt and yeast there.
- Stir, knead the dough, remove to a warm place for an hour.
- Meanwhile, in olive oil, fry finely chopped green onions, olives, chopped in half.
- After 5 minutes, add the fiberized cod fillet, fry until the fish is tender, add salt and pepper at the end.
- Divide the dough in two and roll both out.
- Put the filling on one, put the second on top and pinch the edges.
- Bake at 200 ° C for 30 minutes.
In general, taking this recipe as a basis, you can use any other filling. Focaccia goes well with Italian burrata cheese and tomatoes, potatoes and vegetable mixtures, minced meat and herbs, etc. Dried fruits and jams are usually added to sweet stuffed focaccia.
Video recipes for focaccia
Now that you know how to make focaccia, you can experiment and delight with homemade lunches and Italian-style dinners.
