Recipe: easy, airy focaccia

I have to admit that I’ve let the whole sourdough craze pass me by over the past few months, due to a particularly low level of patience. I mean, by the time that starter is finally ready to go, days have passed, right? So I’d rather leave that to colleagues with more patience for baking… But for this recipe—a beautiful, plump, fluffy (and pretty easy) focaccia—I’m definitely willing to make an exception!

It only requires one sixty-minute rise and then one thirty-minute rise. Just enough time to do some ab exercises while watching a cooking show, look through a fantastic new cookbook, and even make blue frozen margaritas or those insanely delicious watermelon mojito popsicles. That’s my kind of recipe!

How to make fluffy focaccia

• In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, salt and yeast.
• Add the butter and water and mix with your hand.
• Knead until you have a compact ball of dough, leave it in the bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
• Let rise for 60 minutes.
• Place on a floured work surface and gently knead a few more times.
• Grease a 22∅ cm round springform pan with oil.
• Place the dough ball in the pan and knead it out until the bottom is covered.
• Loosely place a tea towel over the pan and let rise for another 30 minutes.
• Preheat the oven to 180° C.
• Place the egg yolk on top of the (further risen) dough, break it up with a brush and brush it over the entire surface.
• Stretch your fingers out next to one another and use firm fingers (straight down) to make a pattern in the dough.
• Sprinkle with your topping of choice (I used chopped rosemary, stirred into a few drops of oil so it wouldn’t burn).
• Bake in the oven for 30 minutes and tear or cut into generous pieces.

Also read:

• Focaccia works of art: every loaf a little painting
• Snackspert: “Even your parents wouldn’t approve”
• How to: decode the Italian menu