Thin-style Wheat Focaccia from Divine Foods

Although the sweet focaccia with oranges wasn't a unanimous crowd pleaser, I've evolved the base recipe over the years until this thin-style wheat focaccia from Divine Foods has become one of my most frequently made recipes and Caleb's most requested bread.

If you're hesitant about making bread, focaccia is a great place to start. It's pretty forgiving, doesn't require any biga or poolish or starter to rest overnight, and you can leave your focaccia to rise for longer than the recipe says without any major deflation or flavor loss (if, for instance, life/meetings/puppies/children interfere with your original baking schedule).

Beyond being a classic sandwich base option, focaccia is the perfect mechanism for scooping up ragu (coming soon), eating with our favorite "dinner" (salami/cured meats, apples, cheese, and bread/crackers), or just eating ... by itself in large quantities. You really can't go wrong.

Keys to succcess:

1. This recipe has a slightly unconventional approach to kneading in a portion of the water first, then streaming in the olive oil, kneading some more, then slowly streaming in the water and kneading even more. Trust the process and don't try to rush it. It's this process that makes the end product so crispy yet fluffy at the same time. Know that you want to make this thin-style wheat focaccia in an electric stand mixer if you have one, because making it by hand will require at least double the kneading time and it's going to be messy.
2. Once baked, this thin-style wheat focaccia doesn't last longer than about 24 hours from when it was baked, and it's truly best within the first 2-3 hours. The thin bread becomes stale rapidly after those first 24 hours, and the gorgeous hunks of salt melt away leaving moisture on top of the bread. Eating a batch of focaccia within 24 hours is not a problem in our house, even with just 2 people, but maybe that's just us.
3. Have extra sourdough discard that you don't want to actually discard? Feel free to sub some in here for a portion of first quantity of water & white flour. You'll need to know the hydration of your starter and then can just subtract the relative grams of water & flour in your starter from the total percentages "raw water & flour" used.

Adapted from Divine Foods

Thin-style Wheat Focaccia

Aside from rise time for the dough, required effort for this focaccia is very minimal.

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Course: Bread

Cuisine: Italian, Middle Eastern

Prep Time: 25 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 25 minutes minutes

Rising time: 2 hours hours 10 minutes minutes

Total Time: 3 hours hours

Servings: 15 pieces; 9x13" pan focaccia

Calories: 186kcal

Ingredients

Dough

• 1 tablespoon (10 g / 0.35 oz) active dry or instant yeast (you don't need to bloom instant yeast)
• 1 tablespoon (21 g) honey
• 1 ½ cups (350 ml) cold water divided
• 2.9 cups (400 g / 14 oz) white flour
• 0.7 cups (100 g / 3.65 oz) whole-wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon fine salt
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Assembly

• 7 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling on pan and over dough
• 2-4 large pinches flaky sea salt such as Maldon

Instructions

Dough

• In the bowl of a stand mixer fit with the dough hook attachment*, bloom the yeast with ¾ of the total water amount for about 5 minutes. Pour in the honey, both flours, and the salt. Knead at a low speed for 3 minutes until a ball of dough forms.
• Slowly stream in the olive oil, continue kneading at low speed for 2-4 minutes. The dough should form a supple, smooth ball.
• Continuing to knead, gradually add the rest of the water until fully absorbed. The dough will look at first as though it is splitting apart, but it will come back together after another 3-7 minutes of kneading.
• Grease a bowl with olive oil, add the dough ball, cover loosely with oiled cling film and side aside to rest until the dough doubles in size (about ¾ - 1 ½ hours, depending on the ambient temperature).

Assembly

• Pour about 4 tablespoons of olive oil into the center of a half-sheet baking pan with rimmed sides. Turn out the dough ball onto the oil blob on the baking pan, turn to coat in oil, and gently pat into a roughly 15-by-21-inch rectangle. Using your finger tips (all 10 of them), dapple the surface of the dough to create many little depressions. Drizzle with the remaining 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Let rise for 40 minutes to 1 hour, until puffed up about double.
• After about 30 minutes, preheat the oven to 410°F. It needs to be at 410°F for at least 20 minutes before you bake the focaccia.
• Evenly sprinkle the entire surface of the dough with salt flakes. Bake the focaccia for 20 minutes, until golden brown along the edges.
• Serve immediately.

Notes

*Don't have a mixer with the dough hook attachment? Never fear. This dough can be worked by hand, although it is certainly easier to work the olive oil in with the dough hook. Follow the instructions, doing the kneading on a clean counter instead of mechanically and planning that it will take an extra 10 minutes.
Alternatively, toss all the ingredients in a bread machine at once, set it to dough, and walk away until the cycle completes.

Nutrition

Calories: 186kcal | Carbohydrates: 24g | Protein: 3g | Fat: 9g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Sodium: 519mg | Potassium: 49mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 1g | Calcium: 6mg | Iron: 1mg