Sunday bake: Sourdough focaccia
Hi! Chef Gaby here. This is my recipe for a 100% hydration sourdough focaccia. If you’re thinking: but Gaby, what does that mean? I’ll tell you! The percentage is a professional baker’s term for the ratio of flour to water, with flour serving as the main point of reference. In this recipe, the amount of water is 100% of the amount of flour — a 1:1 ratio. This high hydration makes the dough more sticky, and a bit more difficult to work with, but the overall texture of your final product is often a softer, more open crumb, as compared to a recipe with a lower hydration level. Focaccia is a great way for new bakers to experiment with higher hydration, and the olive oil makes the dough very manageable.
An important note: You’ll want to feed your starter once or twice before making this recipe, because you want your starter (we named ours Edith) to be very active. If you don’t have your own sourdough starter, send us a message! We’d love to send you our friend, dehydrated “Edith” to begin your sourdough journey!
The Recipe
What you’ll need:
One large bowl for mixing the dough
Bench scraper
Scale
Cast iron skillet
Plastic wrap or unused shower cap
An active starter! Make sure to feed your starter once or twice before making this recipe, so that she’s very active.
Ingredients
500g water
150g active sourdough starter
400g organic, unbleached bread flour
100g organic, sprouted whole wheat flour
10g fine sea salt
topping(s) of your choice!
Preparation
Mix the dough by combining the water with the starter, followed by the flours until well combined. The dough will appear sticky. Cover with a clean kitchen towel, and rest for one hour
Add the salt to the dough and knead to mix well, cover again and rest for one hour
Begin to stretch and fold the dough, every 30 minutes for a period of two hours (I prefer to do coil folds — see a how to video here)
After the last folding session, transfer dough to a plastic or glass container drenched with olive oil. Then, cover with a lid, refrigerate, for 16-48 hours (the longer you ferment, the more depth of flavor develops)
Drizzle a cast iron skillet with olive oil, about 2 T give or take (there’s no need to measure the olive oil precisely; you want the surface of the skillet to be mostly covered with oil
Transfer the dough onto the skillet and cover (I use an unused shower cap!) and leave it on the counter at room temperature for two to three hours, until it’s doubled in size
Time to bake!
Preheat oven to 450 F
Drizzle more olive oil on top, press with hands all over the surface as seen, making lots of bubbles (add toppings after this, if using)
Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown
Rest bread for an hour, then slice
Enjoy! And, would you please do us a huge favor!? When you make this recipe, please tag @chefgabyweir or @leftovers.community on your post! We would love to see your gorgeous focaccia, and would love the good word about our community to spread to your friends and family!
The Leftovers
I’m delighted to give you a glimpse into my sourdough journey by sharing my process for making focaccia. The focaccia pictured here was crafted specifically for an event where I was invited to provide some snacks: the launch of Canned Peaches, a new podcast by KBIA,* mid-Missouri’s local NPR affiliate, hosted by fellow Missourian Nina Mukerjee Furstenau, an award winning author and food journalist. The series is centered around food and community, and how we’re all connected — whether we realize it or not — to the food on our plates. Canned peaches, as described by the show’s creators, are a time capsule; the pop of the lid releases not only a sweet aroma reminiscent of summer, but also a moment in time — a tangible thread connecting past and present, and all those who took part in the process, from seed to sampler.
I wanted the food to reflect the depth of the thoughtfulness behind the creation of the show and the diversity of the production group. I chose to make a variety of sourdoughs to symbolize the “culture” at the heart of the podcast. On the surface it appears to be “just bread,” but when you take a closer look, you realize sourdough’s deep history, the care one must take to keep it alive, and the attentiveness one must give to the dough as it is prepared and baked.
I was delighted to use my own canned peaches to create a compound butter to go with the focaccia. These peaches were from the last fruit of a dying tree in the yard of my partner’s parents’ home, and I’d been saving them for something really special. Saffron was added to the butter to not only give it a deep color, but to honor its profound roots in medicine and religion.
The first episode of Canned Peaches drops November 15 — you can listen here, perhaps while you’re baking sourdough focaccia!
Happy baking!
* Like a can of peaches, many hands and minds helped craft Canned Peaches, the series. The podcast is presented in partnership with the Missouri Humanities and with support from the Missouri Humanities Trust Fund. Partners are Harvest Public Media, Vox Magazine, the Missouri School of Journalism’s Missouri News Network, and the Lee Hills Chair for Free-Press Studies.
