Recipes
A no-knead focaccia that fits around a workday
Five minutes of work on Tuesday night, twenty minutes of attention on Wednesday. The fridge does the difficult part while you are asleep.
Focaccia has a reputation for being a weekend project. It is not. It is a fifteen-minute-total-effort bread that happens to take eighteen hours, almost all of which you spend doing something else.
What you need
- 500 g strong white bread flour
- 400 g cold water
- 10 g fine salt
- 4 g instant dried yeast
- Olive oil, more than feels sensible
- Flaky salt and rosemary to finish
The high water content is what gives you the open, custardy crumb. It will feel wrong in the bowl. Trust it.
Tuesday, 9pm: five minutes
Mix flour, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Add the water. Stir with a spatula until there are no dry patches left, roughly a minute. It will be a shaggy, sticky mess, not a dough. That is correct.
Cover the bowl and put it straight in the fridge.
Wednesday, 6pm: ten minutes
Take the bowl out. With a wet hand, reach under one side of the dough, stretch it up, and fold it over the middle. Turn the bowl a quarter and repeat, four times total. This takes about twenty seconds and replaces all the kneading.
Pour three tablespoons of olive oil into a 23x33 cm tin and tip the dough in. Turn it once to coat, then leave it, uncovered, somewhere warm for two hours. It should relax out toward the corners and look visibly puffed.
Wednesday, 8pm: ten minutes
Heat the oven to 220°C. Oil your fingers and press straight down through the dough to the base of the tin, all over, like you are playing a chord. Those dimples are what hold the oil and salt.
Scatter flaky salt and torn rosemary. Drizzle over another two tablespoons of oil. Bake for 22 to 25 minutes, until the top is deeply golden and the underside is crisp when you lift a corner.
The two rules that matter
Do not skip the cold ferment. Overnight in the fridge is where the flavour comes from. A two-hour room-temperature rise gives you bread that tastes of yeast and nothing else.
Use more oil than you think. Focaccia is fried on its underside as much as it is baked. A dry tin gives you a pale, tough base, and there is no fixing it after the fact.
Eat it warm, within an hour. On day two, split it and toast it in a pan.
Nora Vidal
Founder and editor
