Rosemary Focaccia

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

  • Ingre­di­en­ti:
  • 1 13 cups warm water (about 110°)
  • 2 tsp. sug­ar or honey
  • 1 enve­lope, or 14 oz., active dry yeast
  • 3 12 cups all pur­pose flour
  • 14 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 an extra 14 cup flour while it is mixing.

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.