We promised it a while back, and now we deliver -- easy video instructions for making focaccia. This is really one of the easiest breads to make, so it's a great start if you feel intimidated by the pizza.
These instructions pick up half-way into the pizza tutorial. You should have the exact same dough (4 cups flour, 2 cups water, 2 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. yeast, risen for 8-12 hours) ready to go. Except, you won't be making pizza with it this time, but focaccia. The dough in the tutorial makes two pizzas, and it is a good amount of dough to make a focaccia a little smaller than the size of a pizza. Alternatively, you can use 1 kg of fridge dough. When using fridge dough, it won't be as soft and supple as the dough shown here. It will push back and resist your shaping efforts. When it gets too hard to shape, just let it sit for a few minutes at a time, until it warms up and relaxes some more.
You can put many things on focaccia. I prefer to keep things very simple, and show here my absolute favorite, which is the most classic focaccia of all: rosemary. The dough is topped only with extra virgin olive oil, chopped rosemary (dry is suitable if you don't have fresh), and a sprinkling of kosher salt. As you shape the dough by hand, keep dipping your fingers in water to keep the dough from sticking. The process of creating the dimples is important. Without them, the bread might balloon up like a giant pita bread.
Bake the focaccia at around 470F until golden brown (about 17-18 minutes in our oven). As with most everything I bake, I'm using pizza screens for baking the focaccia.
During baking the focaccia will rise quite a bit:
When done, let cool and slice (I usually cut it with kitchen scissors).
Enjoy!
