Fantastic Focaccia Pizza in Your Oven
Focaccia, the wonderful Italian bread hailing from the sun-drenched Riviera of Liguria, is the centerpiece of this marvelous recipe that you can cook in your own home oven. Focaccia is a hardy bread seasoned with the Meditteranean flavors of olive oil, and takes a lot of heat in order to bake, making it the perfect fit for a scorching-hot pizza oven, especially when covered in your favorite toppings!
Let’s take a look at the interesting properties of focaccia, including how it’s made, and a super simple recipe for cooking focaccia in your oven!
What is focaccia?
At its most basic, focaccia is simply a kind of yeast bread. What makes it distinctive is its flat texture and rich olive oil taste, accomplished by a generous layer of olive oil on the top of the bread before it is baked, as noted by The Spruce Eats. Focaccia bakes into a delicious bread that is often eaten by itself, seasoned with either regular coarse salt or sunny herbs like rosemary or sage.
You’ll also notice that focaccia has small little dimples in it created prior to baking. These are made by pressing your thumb (or the end of a spoon, if you’re not a fan of touching dough) into the bread prior to it going in the oven. Coincidentally, these also make great pockets for including toppings like cheese, tomatoes, or other vegetables and meats.
Authentic focaccia pizza recipe
If you’re ready to bring some Italian tradition to your home oven, then follow this inspired focaccia recipe and use it as the base for a creative pizza that the whole family is sure to enjoy!
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups warm water
- 5 or more tablespoons olive oil
- 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
- 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- Tablespoon instant (rapid rising) yeast
- Rosemary, sage or other herbs to taste
- Cheese and toppings of your choice
Preparation
- In a paddle-fitted stand mixer or a hand mixer, combine the warm water, 3 tablespoons olive oil, salt, flour, and yeast until they form a sticky dough; this will take about one minute.
- Take the dough out of the mixer and give it a dusting of flour, shaping it into a circle.
- Let the dough sit for one hour at room temperature.
- Using your thumb or another object, make several impressions on the surface of the dough and then drizzle it with at least 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
- If desired, add herbs to the dough.
- Top with your choice of cheese, marinara, and other toppings and bake in your oven until golden brown on the edges at a minimum temperature of 475 degrees.
- Let cool, then enjoy!
If you’re a visual person, check out this short time-lapse clip of focaccia pizza being cooked in the Black Maximus Wood Fired Oven; just be warned, it might make you hungry!
Once you’ve cooked your focaccia pizza, let us know how it turned out in the comments!
Need more recipes to keep your pizza oven fired up? Check out our recipe e-Book with lots of wood-fired meal recipes!