I love focaccia bread! There is no way around it. It is so incredibly good. I still remember the days when my mom used to bring fluffy tomato slathered focaccia home from Costco. We would gobble it up like there was no tomorrow. Somehow I doubt that I would still have the same desire to eat that exact one again, in retrospect part of me wonders if it was tomatoes sauce at all…
Somewhere in my early 20s I decided that I wanted to learn to make my own focaccia bread. I pulled my trust joy of cooking and figured out how to make a batch for 50 plus people. That’s what you do when you live at a boarding school right? Needless to say, it was awesome! 😉 Soon I became hooked on making it anytime it was my turn to make Sunday lunch. I would drizzle it with my stash of olive oil and thinly sliced onions. Yum, so good!
Somehow over the years, I stopped making it. I tinkered around with different sourdough versions here and there but never perfected it. One day I found myself cooking Sunday lunch again last with two of my girls, Lesly and Karen. We were making butternut squash pasta sauce.
I really wanted bread so I decided to whip up a quick “focaccia” It didn’t have the traditional souring time but worked for what we needed. With a little sea salt, local olive oil and rosemary it turned out fantastic! Everyone was begging for seconds, we even had someone suggest that we start selling it to the winner next door. I felt like I had too much on my plate so I never went through with it. (On a side note we really should have gone for it since we could have had people like the daughter of Mexico’s president eating our bread, oh well…)
While this may not be a traditional focaccia bread I tend to think that this cheaters rosemary focaccia bread is pretty great, so do about 60 other kids and adults. It also ended up in the book I wrote for my girls. I hope you enjoy it as well!
Cheaters Rosemary Foccasia Bread
Prep
Cook
Total
Ingredients
- 5 cups flour
- 1 ¾ cup warm water
- 1 cup olive oil
- 2 TBS yeast
- 1 TBS sugar
- ¼ cup chopped rosemary
- 6 cloves chopped garlic
- 1 tsp salt
Instructions
- Mix the flour, salt, and rosemary in a large bowl.
- In a small bowl mix the yeast, sugar, and warm water. Stir and allow to rise for 5 minutes or until poofy. Add to the flour.
- Add the garlic and ½ cup olive oil, then mix in.
- Once mixed, turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for 5 minutes. Or simply knead in your stand mixer for 5 minutes.Â
- Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cove, and allow to rise for one hour in a warm place.
- Pour the rest of the olive oil into a baking pan, and use to grease the sides and bottom of the pan. Punch down the dough and stretch out in the pan so that it touched the edges.
- Poke holes in the dough, sprinkle with coarse salt.
- Cover and rise for 30 minutes.
- Bake at 425 for 20-30 minutes until light brown.
Courses Bread
Cuisine Italian
Have you had focaccia bread before? What is your favourite kind?
HI, Katie! I read through the recipe in preparation for making it. The directions above are:
4. Once mixed add the knead for 5 minutes.
It seems some words are missing from that line of the recipe.
Also, I believe the word “bowel” should be replaced with “bowl”. Thanks for this recipe. I intend to make this to serve with Italian Wedding Soup! YUM!. God bless.
Thank you! I really appreciate you letting me know. Especially with older post I am realizing that they were not proof read well. I’m off to correct it. I hope you enjoy the bread! Your soup sounds delicious, it’s been years since I had it!