Soft & Fresh Sourdough Focaccia Bread (beginner level)

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If you are just beginning your sourdough journey and need to acquire a starter, I’d be happy to share mine with you! You can ORDER Sourdough Starter HERE, cost is $12 and includes shipping.

Find more sourdough troubleshooting and tips weekly, here!

What makes sourdough focaccia special, and so delicious?

After starting my sourdough baking journey and feeling mostly confident in the vitality of my starter plus the resulting breads, it was time to experiment beyond the basic sourdough recipe. We love this sourdough pizza crust, english muffins, and the latest – sourdough focaccia.

Puffy and fluffy. Bubbly holes throughout. And a golden brown exterior that rose through the dimples left behind by pressing fingers into the dough, just before baking.

Experimenting with different techniques and water ratios, I settled on this recipe that encompasses a high hydration dough, and a lengthy, hands off bulk fermentation. In short, it looks like: stir dough, long rest & rise, a shorter rest & rise, dimple. Bake. DEVOUR.

There have been a few relatively inexpensive, well-engineered tools that I’ve added to my kitchen as I’ve dove head first into sourdough baking, beginning with my Everyday Sourdough Bread recipe. My Rye Sourdough is another favorite! These tools make certain steps much easier, and ultimately reproducible and accurate. You don’t need all of them right away if you’re just getting started, but the one you MUST have is a digital scale.

Why using a scale is important for sourdough baking:

The reason why using a scale is so important in sourdough is because volume doe not equal weight. For visualization purposes, 1 cup of water does not weigh the same as 1 cup of flour. The water would weigh a lot more than the flour, so when we’re looking to make recipes work, we want to make sure everyone is using the same measurement. Grams don’t lie! :)

Since sourdough baking is a game of ratios and percentages dictated by grams, you won’t be able to work without it. Using a digital scale is one of my top tips in my 5 Sourdough Starter Tips for Beginners.

How To Make Sourdough Focaccia Bread

1. Two days (or more) before you want to start the process, feed your starter each day, 60 grams each of flour and water, discarding about 30 grams right before re-feeding. The goal is to build up the quantity of your starter. You’ll need 135 grams for baking.

I keep my starter in mason jars and find the OXO jar spatula to be perfect for getting around all the edges of the jar, scooping, and handling wet dough.

2. When your starter has risen on the day of baking and is ready to go (here are more tips on when to know it’s ready), get out your stand mixer bowl.

Set bowl on digital scale, and zero out so that it equals 0 grams. This scale features a pull out display for easy reading so it won’t get covered up by the bowl – so helpful!

Mix the starter with the water, pressing zero after each addition so that the measurement goes back to 0 and you can properly weigh/measure.

3. Add flour and salt, and incorporate using hands and spatula. Put the bowl on your stand mixer and mix for about 1 minute on low speed, just so there are no dry bits of flour left. Then mix on speed 4 of your Kitchenaid stand mixer for 7 minutes.

It will be loose and wet, that’s okay and exactly how it should be. This is my preferred method. Let dough rest again for 45 minutes minutes. Now stretch and fold four “corners” of the dough, basically on top of itself. Do this 3 to 4 few times around the bowl.

If you don’t have a stand mixer, you could also knead by hand for 10 minutes, but I don’t recommend this option unless you are an experienced baker. Eventually, you should feel the dough tighten and acquire resistance, pulling away from the sides of the bowl as you work with it.

4. Now it’s time to rest! Cover the bowl with a very damp cloth and set in a place ideally around 70 to 75 degrees. Let rise until dough doubles in size and is puffy, jiggly, and a bit glossy. You should see some small bubbles on the surface.

5. At this point, brush a 7×11 or 9×13 pan with olive oil, distributing so that dough is about 1 to 1/12 inches tall. You don’t want to spread it out too thin.

6. Using lightly oiled hands, gently scrape dough out onto baking sheet. It will look like a big blob, and that’s okay! Using your hands pull the edges out to gently stretch them. Dough should be about 1 1/2 inches tall. Don’t stretch any further than that. Let rise in a warm spot, covered with another sheet pan that’s upside down (so it has room to rise) for 2-3 hours hours until it is puffy and very bubbly. You should see bubbles emerge to the surface.

7. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. I can’t stress how helpful it is to use an oven thermometer at this point instead of the built-in reading your oven gives you. Mine runs 40 degrees high! Having an accurate thermometer ensures the same results every time, and with something like baking where temperature is so crucial, you want to be able to trust it.

8. Drizzle top of dough with olive oil and press your fingertips using your whole hand into the risen dough. Your fingertips should go all the way down through the dough, hitting the pan.

9. Put pan in oven on middle rack and bake for 15 minutes. Remove and brush with melted butter, garlic, and oregano. Turn oven down to 400 degrees F and bake for another 10ish minutes, until crust is golden brown and bounces back slightly when you press down on it. Let cool for 15 minutes and eat.

And there you have it!  Garlic butter sourdough focaccia that will fill your house with the most tempting smells, and your mouth with bread heaven. Soft and chewy, the texture is undeniably a favorite, along with the sourdough flavor thanks to the lengthy bulk fermentation.

Why did my sourdough focaccia turn out dense?

The dough should be at least an inch thick in your cake pan, before the final rise. After the final rise and the dough has doubled, this will give you sufficient dough to press your fingertips in, resulting in bubbly focaccia.

Not doing the stretch and folds could cause your focaccia to be flat and dense when you bake it. This kneading process develops the gluten structure. It will make the dough more soft and elastic. This elastic structure will help trap any air that is released by during the fermentation process.

Finally, if you overproof the dough, your focaccia will not rise, and turn out dense.

More Sourdough Recipes:

• Everyday Sourdough Bread
• Honey Walnut Sourdough Bread
• Rustic Rye Sourdough Bread Recipe

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Soft & Fresh Sourdough Focaccia Bread

A delicious beginner recipe for homemade sourdough focaccia bread that is made with active sourdough starter. The soft, pillowy texture is incredible, and the bread gets lovely flavor from the olive oil and starter.

4.64 from 243 votes

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Prep Time :1 hour hour

Cook Time :25 minutes minutes

Wait Time :15 hours hours

Total Time :18 hours hours

Yield: 1 large loaf

Author: Amanda Paa

Ingredients

• 115 grams [active starter] at its peak – NOT discard
• 350 grams slightly warmer than room temp water
• 175 grams all-purpose flour, preferably King Arthur brand
• 300 grams bread flour
• 10 grams fine sea salt
• olive oil
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano

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Instructions 

• In a large bowl, use a fork to whisk the starter with water until incorporated.
• Add flours and salt, and incorporate using hands and spatula. Put the bowl on your stand mixer and mix for about 1 minute on low speed, until there is no dry bits of flour. Cover bowl with towel and let sit for 30 minutes.
• Then mix on speed 4 of your Kitchenaid stand mixer for 7 minutes.

  It will be loose and WET, that's okay and exactly how it should be. This results in a light and airy finished bread. Drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil evenly over dough. Let dough rest for 30 minutes with a damp cloth over the top of bowl.
• Now stretch and fold four “corners” of the dough, basically on top of itself, just like you would do normally when making sourdough. Do this 3 to 4 few times around the bowl (no resting in between). It will be a wet and sticky dough.
• Cover bowl and let rest several hours at room temperature until dough is just short of doubling, (using a straight sided vessel helps gauge growth SO much) has a few bubbles on top, has a glossy finish and is jiggly if you nudge the bowl. This usually takes another 5 hours if the temperature is around 72 degrees F in your house, quicker if temperature is warmer, longer if the temperature in your house is cooler. But how the dough looks is truly how you should tell when its done with bulk fermentation, rather than time.
• Brush a 7×11 or 9×13 non-stick cake pan (do not use glass) liberally with 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, distributing all the way to sides of pan.
• Using lightly oiled hands, gently scrape dough out into your cake pan. It will look like a big blob and be somewhat wet, and that’s okay! Using your hands gently stretch the the dough, leaving dough alone when it's about 1 to 1 1/2 inches tall. You don't want it to be thin. It will continue to spread out towards the edges of the pan as it goes through its final rise. Let rise in a warm spot, covered with a sheet pan that’s upside down (so it has room to rise) for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours until it is quite puffy, jiggly, airy, and has a few bubbles that look like they are on the surface. This amount of time will depend on how warm your house. Warmer will rise faster, cooler it will rise slower, so use the time given as an estimate.
• Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Drizzle 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil (don't be shy) onto the bread, rub some oil on your hands, and press your fingertips using your whole hand into the risen dough. Your fingertips should go all the way down through the dough, hitting the pan.
• Put pan in oven on middle rack and bake for 15 minutes. Remove and brush dough with melted butter, oregano, and chopped garlic if desired. Turn oven down to 400 degrees F and bake for another 10 minutes. If you aren't not adding the melted butter topping, do not turn down the oven and simply continue baking at 425 degrees for another 10 minutes. Let cool for 15 minutes and eat.

Notes

*This is a very WET DOUGH. And that’s okay! Be patient, it will come together. :)
Adapted from the Artisan Sourdough Made Simple cookbook.