Rosemary Focaccia

Focac­cia means “flat bread” in Ital­ian. Sor­ry if you were look­ing for a com­pli­cat­ed back story.

  • Ingre­di­en­ti:
  • 1 1⁄3 cups warm water (about 110°)
  • 2 tsp. sug­ar or honey
  • 1 enve­lope, or 1⁄4 oz., active dry yeast
  • 3 1⁄2 cups all pur­pose flour
  • 1⁄4 cup extra vir­gin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
  • 2 tsp. flaked sea salt
  • 2 sprigs fresh rosemary

Add warm water and sug­ar to a bowl and stir to com­bine. Sprin­kle the yeast on top of the water. Give the yeast a quick stir to mix it in with the water. Then let it sit for 5–10 min­utes until the yeast blooms.

Mix on low (use the dough hook if you’re using a stand mix­er), then grad­u­al­ly add flour, olive oil and salt. Increase speed to medi­um-low, and con­tin­ue mix­ing the dough for 5 minutes.

Tip:

If the dough gets sticky and isn’t pulling away from the sides of the bowl, add in a spoon­ful or two of flour while it is mix­ing until it stops stick­ing to the bowl.

Remove dough from the bowl and shape it into a ball. Grease the bowl with olive oil, then place the dough ball back in and cov­er it with a damp tow­el. Place in a warm loca­tion and let it rise for 45–60 min­utes, or until the dough has near­ly dou­bled in size.

Pre­heat oven to 400°. Turn the dough onto a floured sur­face, and roll it out into a large cir­cle or rec­tan­gle until the dough is about 1/2‑inch thick. Cov­er the dough with a greased piece of plas­tic wrap, and let the dough con­tin­ue to rise for anoth­er 20 minutes.

Remove the plas­tic wrap, and trans­fer the dough to a large bak­ing sheet. Use your fin­gers to poke deep dents all over the sur­face of the dough. Then driz­zle a table­spoon or two of olive oil even­ly all over the top of the dough, and sprin­kle even­ly with the fresh rose­mary nee­dles and sea salt.

Bake for 20 min­utes, or until the dough is slight­ly gold­en and cooked through. Remove from the oven, and driz­zle with a lit­tle more olive oil if desired.

Slice and serve warm.

Serving Suggestion:

Grab a saucer or ramekin; pour in a few table­spoons of extra-vir­gin olive oil, then add a tea­spoon of bal­sam­ic vine­gar. Tear off pieces of the focac­cia and soak up some oil and vine­gar with the pieces.