After going to culinary school in Italy, I learned how to make an authentic version of Italian focaccia bread. Today, I’m teaching you everything I know in my focaccia masterclass!
Focaccia is a well-known and loved bread in Italy. It’s a bread that’s crispy, light, and fluffy. The signature ‘dimpled’ top is iconic for this style of Italian bread.
Focaccia is a high-hydration dough, meaning there is a high ratio of liquid ingredients (water/oil) in comparison to flour. One of the main ingredients in focaccia is extra virgin olive oil. While traditional focaccia was often made with rendered pig’s fat (lard), the modern day focaccia uses extra virgin olive oil. This Italian staple gives the bread great flavor and texture.
Since Italian cuisine is very regionally focused, different regions and cities across Italy have their own way of making focaccia bread. For example, in the Puglia region, they add tomatoes. In the city of Bari, they top their circular-shaped focaccia with oregano, tomatoes, and olives. And in Tuscany, their focaccia, schiacciata, is known for being thinner (perfect for sandwiches).
In this course, you’ll learn how to make a “classic” same day focaccia bread, rosemary and garlic flavored focaccia, a Puglia style focaccia with tomatoes, and focaccia Barese.
Once you master these, you can dream up any topping ideas or focaccia sandwiches that you want! This is a great base sheet pan recipe using all of the authentic, classic Italian techniques I learned in school. You’ll thank me later when you’re eating the best focaccia bread 🙂
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*Timestamps*
0:00 Intro to Focaccia
1:05 Classic Italian Focaccia
28:34 Infused Rosemary and Garlic Oil
32:01 Rosemary and Garlic Focaccia
36:30 Focaccia Pugliese
40:10 Focaccia Barese
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RECIPES + LINKS :
CLASSIC FOCACCIA: https://homebodyeats.com/italian-focaccia-bread/
ROSEMARY FOCACCIA: https://homebodyeats.com/italian-rosemary-focaccia-bread/
GARLIC FOCACCIA: https://homebodyeats.com/italian-garlic-focaccia-bread/
TOMATO FOCACCIA PUGLIESE: https://homebodyeats.com/italian-focaccia-pugliese/
FOCACCIA BARESE: https://homebodyeats.com/focaccia-barese/
TOMATO & CHEESE FOCACCIA: https://homebodyeats.com/tomato-cheese-focaccia-bread/
FOCACCIA SANDWICH BREAD: https://homebodyeats.com/focaccia-sandwich-bread/
GRUYERE & THYME FOCACCIA: https://homebodyeats.com/gruyere-thyme-italian-focaccia/
LEARN TO COOK IN ITALY (I’m hosting a retreat): https://homebodyeats.com/italian-cooking-retreat/
My Experience Going to Culinary School: https://youtu.be/Yi4LlfJ9–U
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MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO:
***Disclaimer: The links below are affiliate links. Homebody Eats is a participant for LTK & Amazon Associates, affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to products we daily use & trust. If you purchase a product through an affiliate link, your cost will be the same, but Homebody Eats will receive a small commission. All product reviews and opinions are my own.
Kitchen scale (Regular scale): https://bit.ly/35JsNSJ
Kitchen scale (small measurement scale): https://bit.ly/3Oj7zkw
Dough storage containers for bulk fermentation: https://bit.ly/3MSpdv4
Nordic Ware light colored baking sheet: https://bit.ly/448yAfQ
Maldon Sea Salt Flakes: https://bit.ly/3Dq6EbO
Oven thermometer: https://bit.ly/449scVM
Serrated bread knife from Mercer Culinary: https://bit.ly/3rdXCcE
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CONTACT: You can reach me by sending an email to hello@homebodyeats.com
My mind was literally blown after going to culinary school in Italy and learning how classic and authentic Italian fkaca was made. We all know and love fkatcha. It’s crispy, light, fluffy, and it has that iconic dimpled top. But what you may not know is every region in Italy has their own way of making fkaca. So some regions like to top it with tomatoes like Impulia while others in the city of Bari have a circular shaped fkatcha that’s topped with tomatoes, olives, and oregano. And then in Tuscanyany, they like to do their fkatcha a little bit thinner. There are pretty much endless ways to make fkaca, but today I’m going to teach you the base so that way you can learn how to not only make a great dough, but then also use any kind of toppings and flavors that you could want. So, buckle up. I hope that you enjoy the course today, this little mini master class on fkaca. And if you have any questions or want to learn more about Italian cooking, check out the links below. Okay, the very first recipe that I’m going to teach you about in this course is just a general fkaca bread. Like I mentioned in the previous lesson, the different regions around Italy all do their fkaca a little bit different. We’ll get more into that as we get into the course, but for now, I just want to teach you kind of a general fkaca that you can use for pretty much any occasion that you want. This is going to pair great with a pasta dish along with salad. It’s pretty much perfect for anything. Okay, so before we get started, I want to teach you a little bit more about the ingredients that are in the dish because it always matters what ingredients you’re using, especially when it comes to bread baking. So, I want to give you a little science and some insider tips into why we’re using the ingredients that we’re using. You might notice here that I already have all of my ingredients measured. And this in the chef world is what we call mis and plas. Basically, it means measure out all of your ingredients and have everything ready to go. So that way when you actually begin baking, you can focus on baking and not like where’s the sugar, where’s the yeast, oh crap, I forgot to measure this. So misloss is really important when it comes to organization. And just staying organized overall is a big part of becoming a better baker. Before we talk about the ingredients, first I have to go on a little mini rant. If you want to get really good at bread baking, you need to start measuring with scales. Now, I have two different scales here. This one is a little bit more accurate, and it’s great for weighing out small quantities, but just having a general kitchen scale like this is going to work well, too. Now, the reason measuring by weight is so important is because every little change that you make in a baking recipe affects it. That’s just what happens when we get into uh baking versus savory. So, it’s really important to measure your ingredients so that way you have accurate measurements for the entire recipe and across all of your ingredients. Trust me that especially when it comes to measuring flour, it’s easy to overmeasure, when you’re doing it with cups or measuring spoons, it just happens. So, if possible, purchase a scale. And I’ll link these below so that way you can know which ones I like to use and which ones I prefer. Moving on to talking about the ingredients. Let’s first talk about flour. Obviously, every bread recipe is going to contain flour. For this one, we’re using bread flour. Now, you may be tempted to use allpurpose flour since it’s probably already in your pantry, but it’s really important to use bread flour because the protein content is higher than your normal all-purpose flour. What this does is it gives the bread a nice chewy uh texture as well as helps with the crumb of the bread. So, please use bread flour. And if you want to splurge, I would definitely suggest splurging in this category if you want to buy a nice flour like King Arthur that’s unbleached. It’s going to give you a great great quality of fkaca. Okay, moving along, we have olive oil. This is another star of the show when it comes to fkaca. I’ve gotten so many comments on my videos saying that the fkatcha has way too much olive oil in it. And I hate to tell you this, but that’s what Italian fkaca is. It has a lot of olive oil, and the olive oil is going to provide a great rich flavor. Now, if you want to learn more about how to choose a bottle of olive oil that tastes really great, I’ll link an article below. We did so many different olive oil tastings when I was in Italy in culinary school, and it really helped me to learn how to choose a high quality bottle of olive oil that tastes good and is going to make our recipes really delicious. Fkaca is a high hydration dough. So, of course, we’re also going to have to include a decent amount of water in the dough. Now, you’ll notice I have these bowls here that are labeled topping and they also have additional olive oil and water in them. We’ll talk about this later, but since there’s two parts of olive oil and water, if you do your misplas ahead of time, definitely label so you’re not getting them confused. Okay, next, let’s move on to our yeast. Yeast is obviously important to help the dough rise. Make sure that you are checking the expiration date on your yeast. You don’t want to go through this whole process only to have your bread not rise. So, just double check that date. If you want, you can make sure that it’s alive by putting a little bit of the yeast in a bowl of warm water about 100° F and along with a pinch of salt. If you let it sit and it becomes foamy, then you know that your yeast is good and it’s ready to bake with. don’t actually use that in the recipe, but if you want to test it to make sure it’s alive, that’s a great way to do so. Okay, we also have salt and sugar. Now, these two also look alike, so you might want to label them. The sugar, while you may think it’s going to add sweetness to the bread, that’s actually not its job in this particular recipe. So, sugar actually helps it have a golden brown color when it comes out of the oven. Now, salt. You’ll notice that there’s quite a bit of salt in here. And that’s because bread recipes falls flat if you don’t use enough salt. So, don’t be tempted to skimp out on this. For this salt in particular, I like using fine sea salt. I think it just distributes really nicely through the bread. And then the last ingredient we’re going to talk about is yes, more salt. Um, this one is Maldon flaky sea salt. It’s one of my favorites. And we’re using this to garnish the top of the fkatcha. I know again it looks like a lot of salt, but this helps to really get that salty bite on your tongue when you take a bite of the fkaca bread, so I never skip out on this one. Let’s get started on making the dough. First, you need a stand mixer that has a dough hook attachment. When we were in Italy, they recommended not to make this dough by hand, and I think you’ll see why when I start adding the water and the olive oil. So, it’s best to have a stand mixer. If you don’t have one, a friend might have one. Borrow it and try this out. Okay, so next we are going to add all of our flour into the bowl along with the yeast. And see, having all these bowls kind of makes uh clean up really easy and simple. And then you know everything is measured correctly. Okay. So, next, while we have the mixer going, we’re going to start adding in the water slowly. Like I mentioned, picatcha is a high hydration dough. So, if you add in the water all at once, the dough is just going to become a sloppy mess. You really need to add it in slowly in a few different batches and allow the water to fully absorb before you add more in there. You’ll start to see that the flour will clump up a little bit. And that’s how you know that it’s absorbed once you don’t see standing water anymore. And then you can add in another little batch of water. You can see at this point that the dough looks a bit shaggy now that we’ve added in all the water. Next, we’re going to add in the sugar and just allow the mixer to fully mix it in. And then we’ll move on to the olive oil. When you’re adding in the olive oil to the dough, this is probably where you have to have the most patience. Like I mentioned with the water, if you add it all at once, the dough just kind of becomes a sloppy mess. So the same can happen with the olive oil. The olive oil though is going to start to break up the gluten net that is forming in the dough. So this is a little bit of a struggle, especially if you don’t have a professional bread mixer, like most of us don’t have that. So, with this KitchenAid mixer, there are a few things that we have to do to kind of help the dough mix. The first thing, though, is making sure that you’re adding your olive oil slowly. When you’re adding in the oil, allow it to fully mix into the dough before you move on to adding in the next batch. Now, if your dough starts to get stuck like this, what you can do is grab a silicone spatula and kind of force it around the dough hook. This helps the dough hook get enough traction to start mixing in the olive oil. Once again, as you’re adding the last batch of olive oil, go ahead and at this point add in your fine sea salt. You can see that the dough starts to break up with the olive oil, but the salt is actually going to bring everything back together. And you’ll start to actually see this happening in the mixer once you add the salt and allow it to mix for a few more minutes. At this point, we’re almost done with the dough. The last step is to turn your mixer on high, which is just going to allow the dough to knead for a bit longer in the machine. And you’ll want to do this for about 1 to two minutes. The sign that you’ll look for to know that your dough is done mixing is that it will start to almost pop in the mixer. You’ll start to hear that sound and the dough will start to form around the dough hook. So, it all comes together in one solid mass. Once the dough forms all around the dough hook, I usually let it continue mixing for around 30 seconds just to make sure everything is nice and formed together. At this stage though, be careful of your mixer and probably hold it just to make sure that it’s not jumping off the counter because these KitchenAids aren’t always perfect when it comes to bread. And I definitely do not want you breaking your mixer on account of this recipe. So, just hold it down and make sure it’s not too close to the edge of the counter and you will be fine. At this point, we are ready to set the bread dough up for the bulk fermentation stage, which is a fancy term we use in the baking community. That just means to rise. The bulk ferment is where the dough is doing most of its rising. And we do this before the dough is shaped. So, for this, I like to use these uh containers. I can link where I got these below, but they’re really great for bread making. The only kind of downside is that they’re tall. So, if you don’t have a large fridge that can hold these, maybe go with something a little less big. Now, for this dough recipe, we’re looking for the dough to triple in size. So, if you don’t have something like this container, you can also get a bowl that’s roughly you want it three times the size of what the dough is currently. So, we all we did was we oiled this. I just poured a little bit of extra virgin olive oil since that’s the oil that we’re using um in the rest of the dough. And you’ll just go ahead and oil this to make sure that the dough does not stick to it. All right. Now that it’s oiled, what we’re going to do is we are going to grab the dough out of the mixer. It helps also if you have some olive oil already on your hands because this dough at this point is still a little bit sticky. So now you can form it into a ball. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but we’re just trying to keep things neat and clean at this stage. So form it into a ball and then place it in the container. Again, this is helpful because you can see these numbers on the side. So it kind of helps to show you once it reaches that like three mark, the three quart mark that we’ll be ready for the next step of the process. You can cover this with a lid or plastic wrap, whatever you have on hand. And your rise time is going to vary depending on where you live. So, if you live in a warm environment, it could take a little bit uh less time for the dough to rise. If you live in a cold climate, likely it’s going to take a little bit longer. And this can, of course, also vary season to season. I generally like to place my dough next to a sunny window, especially right now. here is cold, so it kind of gives it that little extra heat that it needs to fully rise. Now, a little trick I learned in culinary school is to write down the time on like your plastic wrap that you started to put this dough um to rise. And that just helps you kind of keep track of time. So, if you want to make this dough over and over again, you know, in your environment about how long it takes for the dough to fully rise. So, I’m going to take this away and I’ll see you back in a couple of hours once this dough is ready. So, we finally have our dough that has risen and is done um with the bulk fermentation stage. So, at this point, it’s time to gather all of our ingredients to start getting the bread ready to proof. Proofing is a stage that basically means you’re going to shape your dough into whatever shape it is. For this, we’re going to stretch it into a 9 by13 baking sheet, but it could also mean like making your bagels like the size and the shape they need to be. Um, any kind of yeasted dough. You make it the shape and then you allow it to proof uh before it goes into the oven. So, the first thing we need to do is make our fkaca topping. Now, remember I mentioned our topping has both water and extravirgin olive oil in it. Water is a secret trick that we learned in culinary school. And I haven’t really seen a lot of recipes around the internet that include the water in the topping. What the water does is it helps steam the bread so you get a nice lift on the bread and it has a really nice crunch and texture to the outside crust. So don’t skip out on this water. It’s just equal parts. So, if you ever make this and you can’t remember, it’s just equal parts of each. Now, you’re going to just combine these and then whisk them together. Obviously, oil and water don’t like to mix. So, if you do this ahead of time and then allow it to sit, you might have to kind of remix it um before adding it on top of the fkatcha. So, we’ll get this ready along with our flaky sea salt. Again, just to have everything organized and prepared. We’ll get this ready, too. Now, let’s talk about the baking sheet. For baking, you want to use a light colored baking sheet. When it comes to ovens, the dark pans can sometime absorb too much heat and get your baked items a little bit more brown than you would want them. So, I always suggest um using light colored sheet pans. I love Nordic wear. I’ll link these below. These are kind of my go-to for baking, for cookies. I do a lot of macarons, so I always use these sheet pans for that. Now, next, you’re going to grab some olive oil, and you’re going to generously oil your tray. This seems like a step that’s not important, but if you don’t give your pan enough oil, it’s going to stick to the bottom. So, really pay attention that you’ve generously greased the entire pan, not only the bottom, but also like these sides. Um, and do it pretty thoroughly, pretty carefully. Okay. So, at this point, we are going to pour our dough straight onto the pan. Now, it shouldn’t stick too much because of all the oil that we put in there. So, if you did it right, it should plop right out. Now, we don’t want to take out too much of the air, so be as careful as you can, but we are going to be stretching it, so naturally, some of the air will come out. Now, my tip for this is to use gravity. Gravity is your friend when it comes to your stretching this dough and keeping the air in. You want to kind of pull it up and let gravity naturally stretch it for you. It does take a while, so be patient. This is kind of the fun meditative part of baking when it comes to, you know, doing these tasks that take a little patience but are also kind of fun. and then you’ll get to see your pretty dough that you made. Okay, so now we’ve stretched it out. It’s almost the size of this pan, but you can see that as I’m stretching it, see, look, the dough is kind of pulling back in. That’s okay. Um, what it means is that the gluten needs to relax a little bit more. So, what we’re going to do is just allow this to sit here for about 10 minutes, and then we’ll come back and we’ll try to stretch it out. Again, the gluten has a mind of its own, so sometimes it needs to rest a little bit more. So, you can gauge as you’re pulling it apart if it needs 10 minutes, 15 minutes to sit. So, that way it’s not pulling back into your baking sheet. With the dough relaxed, we’re going to try to stretch it out once more to all the way to the edges of the pan. You can see now that it’s sat for a minute that it’s not pulling back as much as it was. So, we did a good job. We are looking good for the next step. A classic with fkaca is the dimpled look. And this is the stage that we’re going to do it at. If you’ve been baking for a while, you might have seen recipes that dimple the fkatcha after the dough is proofed. But that doesn’t really make any sense because once it proofs, it has a lot of air in it and then you’re mashing all of that air by dimpling it. So this is the correct stage that you want to dimple your fkaca at. So you just take your fingers and kind of stick them in the dough to make lots of dimples on top. You don’t want to push too hard. You don’t want to see the pan underneath. Just kind of lightly use the bed of your fingers to make all of the dimples. All right. So that looks good. Make sure again that you have your dough in the corners as well. From here, we are going to add the topping. And like I mentioned, the oil and the uh water kind of separated. So, we’ll mix that back up. And then you just want to evenly pour it all on top. This adds so much delicious flavor and it really helps the crust become crunchy like I mentioned. So, this is one of my favorite parts. All right. Now from here we are going to use the Moldon flaky sea salt and just sprinkle it on top. I love moldon for topping lots of different things. So that if this isn’t something that you already have in your pantry, you can easily order I have a whole bucket of it and I use it for all sorts of things like putting on top of like chocolate chip cookies. Salt in baking, especially with sweets, is so underrated. And it really adds that pop of flavor. And that’s one of the things that we really learned in culinary school, was making sure all of our food had super good and delicious flavor. And that’s kind of what this does. It’s just a really little and easy trick to ensure that you’re going to get that bite of salt with your bread. And again, if you pair this with something like a salad or, you know, something that doesn’t have a ton of salt, usually this is just going to enhance the flavor of the whole meal that you’re eating. All right, so looking good. Now, it’s time to proof the dough. When it comes to proofing, you may have a setting on your oven that will allow you to proof your dough inside of the oven. If that’s the case, feel free to use that. But what I like to do since I don’t have that option is I just proof the dough on top of my oven. What I usually do is set it to a warm setting. So it’s a very low temperature and it just gives enough ambient heat to help the dough puff up before we bake it. It’s going to proof for about an hour. You want it to double in size. So it just kind of rises a little bit above this portion, the sides of the pan. So, what I do is put some plastic wrap over it. And sometimes you’ll see that this topping likes to stick to it. I’ll show you a trick. I usually just end up squeezing it back out if it gets stuck there at all. Apparently not having very good luck with these plastic wraps today. All right. And again, if you’re proofing it in your oven, you don’t want to put this on top of it because you’re going to have probably some steam that comes with the proofing setting and so this would melt. So, I only like to put this over it if it’s going to be proofed on top of your oven. So, at this point, I’m going to set it on the oven, and I’ll come back and I’ll show you what it looks like once it’s done proofing. We’ve got our fully proofed pkatcha bread right here. And I’m going to show you what it looks like. The nice thing about having all that oil and water on top is that it easily comes off. And I just like to like ring it out because the oil and the water, you want it to bake on the dough. So, this is just a way that any of the excess you can just make sure that it’s back on the bread. Okay. This takes a minute, but I feel like it’s worth the extra effort just to get all that flavor back into the dough. All right. So, you can see So, you can see at this point that the dough has risen even more. And that’s the point of the proofing stage. It’s just to inject even more air into our fkaca. Now, at this point, you really want to be careful because you don’t want to knock any of this beautiful air out of the bread. The bread is going to continue to rise in the oven. And this is a term known as oven spring. When it hits the hot oven, it’s going to keep going up, and that’s what makes a nice and fluffy fica. But for now, make sure that your oven is preheating to 430° F. I always recommend baking with an oven thermometer. You can see that mine’s very dirty and well-loved. Um, I’m actually ordering a new one because you want to replace these about once a year just to ensure that they stay accurate. Um, but this is good. You can put it in the middle of your oven. And so usually what I do is put one rack in the middle and place this on the middle rack and then I put the rack the next rack right on top of it and that’s where I bake my focatra. But this is going to ensure that your oven is reaching the correct temperature because obviously the recipe that I’ve designed is for 430° F. So if your oven is spiking or it’s not hot enough, your bread isn’t going to properly bake. So, make sure that you’re preheating your oven until this reads 430° F. It may take longer than the traditional preheat setting. You know, when that timer like bings and it’s, oh, okay, it’s ready. It’s preheated. Sometimes it actually takes longer than that. So, go by the oven thermometer, not by that preheat timer. And then after that, we are going to put this beauty in the oven and bake it off. Let’s bake this off for 25 to 30 minutes in our heated oven. All right, so we have our finished pkatcha. It’s nice and golden brown on the top and crispy if you kind of like feel it. You always when you’re baking want to look at visual indicators because sometimes your oven goes crazy or your oven is different than my oven. So the time range always kind of varies depending on your personal equipment. But using visual indicators like looking at the overall dness and golden color is a really good tip. So now that it is all baked, one of the tips I learned in Italy was to cover your fkaca while it’s cooling. And this is why my towels have a bunch of stains on them because I do stuff like this. But when you cover your fkaca, it’s going to keep all of that moisture in there and keep the bread really nice and soft. And you’ll want to leave it like this until it’s fully cooled. The bread is finally cooled. So, we get to cut it now and take it out of the pan. I usually like to use just a butter knife to run it along the edges and make sure nothing is sticking where you’re really going to put to the test if you grease the pan enough. And if not, it’s okay. I’ve had it happen to me before, too, where the bread sticks. But next time, just try to add a little bit more oil so that doesn’t happen. All right, it seems like everything is undone there. So, we’re just going to lift it out. There we go. I did a good job this time. And we’re going to transfer it to a cutting board. Now, you can cut this into really whatever size pieces you would like. I tend to try to get 18 pieces out of here if I’m cutting them pretty even, but do whatever size you like. You can do kind of like smaller portions depending on what you’re going to serve it with or even bigger ones if you want to make sandwiches out of it. So, very personal, up to you. When you’re cutting bread, always use a bread knife. This is a serrated knife, so it has teeth and this helps you easily cut through the bread. I’m obsessed with Mercer Culinary Knives. So, if you are in need for a good knife, definitely check this one out. I can link it below for you. I really love all of their knives. I use their chef’s knife every day of my life. Okay, so you just want to drag it across and gently pull it down. Again, the goal with these teeth is to not smush the bread, but it just kind of like gently um runs through and then gets you this perfect piece. This crumb is so good. I mean, just like look at it. It’s fluffy and airy along with this crispy crust. It’s so good. Okay. So, cut this all up and when you go to eat it, of course you can eat it now just as it is or if you want. Traditionally, fkaca is reheated before it’s served. So, you’ll want to go ahead and look at the lesson at the end of this course. I put a whole section in there how to reheat the fkaca. It’s pretty easy. You just bake it again. And this is nice because traditionally, you’re going to make bread ahead of time. So, if you’re going to make it for a dinner party, you can prep it ahead and then right before you’re ready to serve, reheat it. And what that does is it just gets the bread nice and crispy. But that’s not going to stop me from trying a piece. So, let’s cut a piece and try it. [Music] It’s just so like soft and it’s perfect. And if you really like the crispy edges, definitely try to get an edge piece. I’m obsessed with that. And the best part is that like the flaky sea salt that’s on top, whenever you get like a a bite of that, not only is it crunchy, but it also just like that flavor is enhanced by the little bit of salt. I really love salt if you can’t tell. But yes, I hope that you have enjoyed this lesson and learned a lot. This is your base. So, now that you know the base, I think the rest of the lessons are going to make so much sense. In this lesson, I’m going to teach you how to make some garlic and rosemary infused extravirgin olive oil. This is a skill that I learned while in culinary school, and I am obsessed with these oils. I literally use them on everything. On roasted vegetables and salad dressings, on my pasta, and for this ficaca recipe. Now, the really cool thing about these oils is they can help add lots of different flavors to the classic ficaca bread. Now, I’m going to show you how to make these recipes, but I do have to warn you that the recipes will give you a full bottle of olive oil. The reason I did this, and I think it’s worth making an entire bottle, is because it takes a while to make these oils. So, the effort that you put in can not only be used on this picatcha bread recipe, but also on all those other dishes that I just told you about. The first recipe that I’m going to show you how to make is garlic infused olive oil. This is using a method that we called cold infusion. So, there’s no heat or cooking applied to this one. Here’s what you’ll need to do. First, add one cup of garlic cloves, which is about four heads of garlic, into a food processor. You’re going to pulse this just until it’s roughly chopped. This step allows us to release the garlic flavors and aroma that’s going to come out in our oil. Next, combine 16.9 oz of extra virgin olive oil and add that to a mason jar along with the chopped garlic. What we’re creating here is a cold oil infusion. So, there’s no heat required for this process. Next, this is a really important step. You need to cover the mason jar with a coffee filter secured by a rubber band. The garlic fermentss during this process and it needs a breathable cover, not a tight lid. Then allow the garlic to sit at room temperature in a dark cool place for 48 hours. Next, it’s time to strain and discard the garlic. You may be hopeful to use the garlic again, but the flavors and the nutrients have been extracted into the infused oil, so I’d suggest just throwing it away. Finally, store the infused oil in a sterilized dark color bottle with a sealed lid and then place that away from any light or heat until you’re ready to use it in all of your dishes. Up next, we are going to be making a rosemary infused extravirgin olive oil. And this one uses a slightly different process called a hot infusion. We will be doing some cooking for this, so it does take a little bit longer of more active cooking time. Add 16.9 oz of extra-virgin olive oil to a saucepan along with half an ounce of rosemary. The method that we’re infusing olive oil today is called a hot extraction. So, we’re going to need some heat. Place a saucepan over mediumigh heat until it reaches 230° F on an instant read thermometer. Then, remove the saucepan from the heat and allow the oil to cool until about 120° F. Once cooled, remove and discard the rosemary. Then we’re going to repeat this process two more times by adding in an additional half an ounce of rosemary into the saucepan and then heating it and cooling it two more times. What this does is it allows us to get a really bold rosemary flavor infused into our olive oil. After the last batch is cooled, strain and discard the rosemary. Then you can store it in a dark colored bottle with a sealed lid away from light and heat and then use it on top of all of your favorite recipes to add a little extra flavor. Now that you know how to make the classic picatcha bread, I’m going to teach you a super easy variation using the rosemary and garlic infused olive oil from the last lesson. So basically, you have to follow all of the same instructions that we used to make the classic picatcha. We made the dough the same. We did the bulk fermentation the same. The only thing that’s a little bit different is when it comes to actually prepping the dough. So, what we’re doing here is I have our oil and water topping mixture in this container. The only difference is that we’re using infused oil instead of regular extra virgin olive oil. So, you can use either the rosemary or the garlic one, whichever you prefer. And you’ll see from the videos that the oil doesn’t actually take on any additional color. So you really can’t tell the difference unless of course you’re eating it and then you taste that delicious and rich rosemary or garlic flavor. Really either are a winner in my book. They’re both delicious. If I had to pick, garlic is probably my favorite, but rosemary is definitely a close second. So I’m going to show you what to do. So I also like to use the infused oil to oil the pan. What it does is it just helps to ensure that the bottom crust is also kind of coated in that delicious infused oil. So, you’ll do the same thing as before. You’re just going to go ahead and lather all of the sides up with that infused oil. And then we will start stretching the dough. All right. Nice and easy. Oh, let’s put that up. Okay, nice and easy. So, we’ll begin stretching it the same way using the gravity just like I taught you before. Now, what’s great about this variety of fkaca is that it’s just like an easy substitute to do. For me, learning so many different bread recipes, it can get overwhelming because all of the steps are different and every time you make a new recipe, you kind of have to work out the kinks in your own kitchen. So, this is a nice way that once you learn that basic recipe, you’re going to be able to make these flavor varieties. And again, you can pick really delicious pasta dishes to pair with them. Or this is even a great appetizer if you want to make like a quick dipping sauce. Well, that’s not traditional in Italy to have a sauce to dip with it. My American side is showing. I love a good sauce or a good dip. So, I’m not opposed to that. So, I’m going to let this rest a little bit since it’s pulling in. And then we’ll come back and finish off the topping. After some resting time, this ficatcha is good to go. We are going to now dimple it and then get ready to put the garlic infused olive oil on top. All right. So, at this point, we’re going to mix it up just one last time. This pesky oil and water never wants to stay together. All right. And then pour it on just like we’ve been doing. Really not much different. And then from here, we’re still going to sprinkle our Maldon sea salt on top. Again, salt is just there to enhance all of the other flavors. So, your garlic or if you choose rosemary oil, it’s just going to be enhanced by adding the salt on top. From here, we’re going to do the same thing that we did with our classic picatcha. We’re going to proof the dough and then we’re going to put it into the oven to bake. The garlic pkatcha is finally out of the oven. So, I wanted to do a quick taste test with you. I’m really excited for this one. Personally, the garlic fkatcha is just one of my favorites. It looks so nice. Very similar to the original fkaca. Again, we basically did the same thing just with the oil. M. That garlic is so good. There’s just a perfect burst and hint of garlic along with that fluffy texture. Unbeatable. And I promise you, if you do this with rosemary oil, you’re going to get the same great result. and with rosemary. If you want to even sprinkle some rosemary on top before you bake it, that would be a really pretty presentation. Up next, I am teaching you how to make a fkaca from the Pulia region of Italy. Now, classically in Pulia, they like to add tomatoes on top of their fkatcha, which you’ll actually see in another upcoming lesson when I teach you a different type of fkatcha from a city in Pulia. But this one, we are going to add tomatoes. We’re actually using canned tomatoes. So, this is a great option if you want to make it during the winter months when there aren’t fresh tomatoes available. Um, all you’ll need are some whole canned peeled tomatoes. And you’ll actually want the juice as well, and I’m going to show you in a minute why. So, this recipe just uses the same classic dough that we made for our original fkacas. The only thing we’re changing is the topping. So, super simple, especially once you’ve learned how to master the dough. So, the first thing we’re going to do is we are going to with clean hands, obviously, crush these tomatoes on the fkaca. You may remember in the other recipes that we used water on top of the crust along with the extra virgin olive oil. Well, since these tomatoes, you can see, have a lot of water and juice in them, we don’t have to add additional water. We’re just using the water that comes out of the juice of the tomatoes. So, you can crumble it across the top. And don’t be scared if it’s juicy and messy. That’s part of the process. Um, and all of this great juice is just going to flavor the bread. It’s so good. This is actually a great option if you want to kind of make like a pizza inspired fkatcha. You could also add some cheese on top of that. It is a little messy though, so your counter might get splattered a little, but that’s okay. We can clean that up pretty easily. So, once you’re done with this, you’re going to be left with some juice. And I actually, when I measure it out, I include some of the juice, too. Again, it’s just giving us that water that we like. And you’ll just go ahead and pour it straight on top. Now, after this, we also have to include some olive oil, just like we have in all of our other recipes to get that great flavor and that crust that we like. So, just pour it on top just like we had before. And since the tomatoes are pretty neutral in flavor, we’re going to still add our flaky sea salt. So you can see that a lot of these recipes by just changing the topping, it’s completely changing the flavor, but it’s really easy to master and the dough is the same. So practice that and you will be good to go. All right, so at this point, we’re going to do the same proofing and baking process that we’ve done for the rest of our bread. So I’m going to get this into the oven, and then we’ll come back and do a taste test. The tomato fkatcha baked for the same amount of time and at the same temperature as our classic fkatcha bread. So, it’s really easy to remember that. You can see now that it’s pulled out of the oven and cooled that it is so golden brown and delicious, especially with all the tomatoes on top. It’s such a different flavor compared to the other fkaca breads like our classic and our rosemary and our garlic one. And I just love how this looks. Also, it’s a beautiful presentation. So, feel free to serve it just like this on your cooking sheet and then cut it up as you need it. But I hope you enjoy this one. It’s a unique take on fkaca and I think you’re really going to love it. Now, it’s time for me to teach you a completely new fkatcha recipe. This recipe is called fkaca beret and it’s from a town in Bari which is in the Pulya region of Italy. This fkaca bread is a little bit different and it uses somewhat of the same ingredients. So if we’ve already gone over the ingredients, I am not going to go over them again. I’m going to teach you about the new ingredients that are added into this uh specific picatcha. So first we have semolina flour. This is also called Durham wheat flour. And this is used in a lot of different Italian recipes, including if you make homemade pasta, specifically from the southern region of Italy, they use this Durham wheat flour. It provides great texture and crunch. And you’ll see once you make it that it’s a little bit different than the other fkacos that we’ve made. Next, we have a potato, which seems a little weird to put in bread, but trust me, it adds great flavor as well as texture to the final bread. Now, the main difference about this fica is all the toppings. What they do for the toppings is they add three different things: tomatoes, olives, and then dried oregano. For the olives, you can use pretty much any variety. If you want to use Mediterranean green um and colamada olives, you can also use black olives. Doesn’t really matter. Whatever you prefer um and whatever your preference is. Next, for the tomatoes, obviously Italians love seasonal food. It’s the best obviously tastewise, but it’s also great when you can find products that are grown locally to you. That’s a very Italian thing. So, if you can make this in the summer when tomatoes are best, it’s always going to taste more delicious. I like using cherry tomatoes just how they look. They’re easy to place, but you can use larger tomatoes and cut them down. Or if it’s the winter time, you can also use canned tomatoes and just crush them in your hand. So, this is what makes focs that we’ve made today. And I’m really excited to show you this one. This one is honestly one of my favorite recipes. The last unique thing about this bread is that it’s circular. So, we’re making this in a circular pan as opposed to a sheet pan. And it’s kind of cool because it’s a smaller portion. So, this is perfect if you’re having like a dinner party and you need to make um bread. Although this recipe is going to make four of these, you can easily reheat one individual pan and it’s perfect for like a dinner party of four to six people. The first thing we need to do in order to make this foca from bari is start with our potato. So, I’ve washed the potato and then I’m just going to go ahead and peel it. Now, you want about a 210 g um potato or something kind of around that size. We’re only going to actually use 200 g of it in the recipe, but by the time you take the skin off and then boil it, you know, the size reduces a little bit. So, it’s better to get a potato that’s a little bit larger than the amount that we need, just to make sure that you’ll have enough for the actual amount that’s included in the recipe. So, once you get this all the way peeled, it doesn’t have to be perfect, um, we’re going to go ahead and slice it into about 1 in pieces. When you’re boiling potatoes, you want it to be fairly even pieces so they all cook similarly. Because we’re going to mash these up and it’s going into a loaf of bread. It’s not super integral that everything is completely perfect and pristine. Again, don’t stress about it too much, but just try to get it as even as possible. At this point, you’ll also want to have a pot ready. We will just put this directly into a pot. And then traditionally when you boil potatoes, you want to start with cold water. So we’re just going to add enough water that it will cover the potatoes. We’re going to go ahead and bring these potatoes to a boil. And once the water is boiling, it takes usually about 5 to 8 minutes to fully cook the potatoes. You’re looking for the potatoes to be tender, so you can use a knife to poke through the potatoes and test that they’re tender enough to mash. Now that the potatoes are all cooked, it’s time to mash them up. We’re going to mash the potato. And we need about 1 cup or 200 g for the recipe. I’m just going to do this straight on my cutting board uh with a fork. Obviously, if you don’t have chef hands like I do and you can’t stand the heat, let these cool a little bit. They are a little bit easier to mash while they’re warm, but it doesn’t have to be straight out of the water in order for you to mash them if you don’t want to burn your hands. I totally get that. So, we’re just mashing them until they are all kind of broken up. There’s not an exact science to this. This is kind of a non-precise thing when it comes to baking, which is great because usually baking there is so many like precise things that you have to make sure you do exactly right that it’s kind of nice to have a task like this where you just mash and it is what it is. Um, I’ll also at this point out my bench scraper. This is a great baking tool and if you bake a lot, it’s really easy to like move things to work with dough. Um, so I definitely recommend just having this kind of in your tool kit, especially if you bake a lot of bread, um, or just bake a lot in general. If you’re measuring the potato with a measuring cup, this is something that I’ll allow you to measure with the measuring cup. Uh, I won’t yell at you for this one. Flour, I might yell at you for measuring with the measuring cup, but not the potato. Um, so if you do use a measuring cup, you want it to be pretty firmly packed in there because you can see like there’s a lot of air and a lot of fluff in these. So, make sure that it’s pretty firmly packed in the measuring cup. I’m still going to use my scale just because I’m a scale freak when it comes to just measuring everything for baking. All right, so we’re almost there. We’re going to measure one more time. And you may have a few pieces left over and that’s fine. Uh you can eat those make them make yourself a little mashed potato bowl so that way they don’t go to waste. Um but we’re don’t you don’t want to you know not have enough. So that’s why I usually like to use a potato that’s a little bit larger. Now it’s time to make the dough. So I went ahead and added in the bread flour to the mixer bowl along with the semolina flour and the yeast and the sugar will also go in there. Now, you may notice that I’m using a paddle attachment for this bread. And that’s because the semolina along with the amount of water and oil that we are adding makes this dough pretty loose. Again, it’s high hydration and the dough hook doesn’t quite catch on to um the dough. So, I went ahead and I’m going to use the pile attachment for this one. So, similarly to the other fkaca, we need to add this water in batches. Add it slowly and again, watch to make sure that the flour is absorbing the water before you continue adding in more. I can’t tell you how many times we mess this up in culinary school, so just be careful. I warned you. You can see at this point that the dough has formed together and all of the water has been absorbed into the flour. So, now it’s time to add in our mashed potatoes, which seems kind of funny cuz mashed potatoes seem more like a dish to me than uh the mashed potatoes that we’re using here. See, this is the bad thing about using measuring cups. Harder to get out. Okay, so at this point, we are going to let the mashed potato go ahead and mix in with all of the other ingredients. It’s time to add in the olive oil. And you’ll notice at this point that we’re kind of following that same process step by step with what order we’re adding the ingredients. So once you’ve made this a couple times, you’re just going to start to remember that this is always the order that you add things in. So remember with this olive oil, add it in slowly and in batches. And make sure that you give the flour time to absorb the oil. You’ll notice that at times when we’re using the paddle attachment that the dough can start to get high up on that paddle. So if that happens, it’s not a big deal. just grab a silicone spatula and you can start kind of pushing it back down and off that paddle attachment. I had to do this a couple times throughout the mixing process. Um, so just be aware of that. So once we’ve added our last little bit of olive oil, you know what time it is. It’s time to add in the salt again and help bring that dough all back together. Once you’ve added in the salt, allow it to fully incorporate into the rest of the dough. After everything has been mixed, it’s time to once again bump the mixer speed up to I usually use medium high around a six to eight on my KitchenAid and let it mix for an additional 1 to 2 minutes. You might see a similar problem with the dough rising up kind of tall on the dough hook. That’s fine. Just keep pushing it back down with the silicone spatula. These last couple minutes in the mixer are going to be helpful for that gluten to start really forming as you’re kneading all of the dough together. Now, it’s time to set this dough up so it can bulk ferment. I’m going to grab a bowl. And you want this bowl to be a little bit bigger because what’s going to happen from here is that we’re first going to allow the dough to double in size. And then from there, the dough goes into the refrigerator to ferment for an additional 24 hours. That’s again, that’s something unique about this style of fkaca. And the extra time where the dough sits in the refrigerator is going to add lots of delicious flavor and help with the crumb and the texture of the bread. So don’t be tempted to skip that. But it’s important to have a larger bowl because after the dough doubles in size, it’s going to still grow a little bit in the refrigerator and definitely don’t want to wake up to dough overflowing uh in the morning. So trust me, I’ve been there. It’s not fun to clean up. So once you have your bowl oiled, we’re going to go ahead and grab this dough. Now this dough is going to be even stickier than the last one. So it’s very helpful to have your hands a little oily. So grab all the dough. Do not waste this dough. That’s another thing in the baking community. Um making sure that you’re not really leaving much in the bowl. Scraping it as clean as you can. Also, whenever we write recipes, you know, we’re always making sure that you’re using everything. So, sometimes your recipe might not yield the correct amount if you’re not fully scraping your bowl. So, we’re going to do the same thing as the last fkaca dough. We’re going to roll it in as best of a circle as you can. This one is kind of hard to maneuver just because it’s so sticky. And then we’ll go ahead and place this in the bowl. Got to wash my hands really quick. That’s the downside of sticky dough. Right, now that we’re back with clean hands, we are going to cover this dough with plastic wrap. And apparently, this is not in as tight as I had thought it was. Okay, so at this point, we’re going to allow this dough to rise for the next couple of hours. Again, depending on what environment you are in, the dough may take a little less or more time to rise depending on how hot or cold it is in your kitchen. All right. So, we will be back with this one in a couple of hours. Our fkaca beret has finally risen. It’s doubled in size so you can take a look at it. But at this point, there’s not much else to do today. What you’re going to want to do is keep it covered up and then place it in the fridge for 24 hours. This is going to give it lots of flavor and also help with the texture of the bread once it’s baked up. Don’t be tempted to skip it. I know it sounds like a lot of waiting time, but it really does make the difference. So, we’re going to put this in the fridge and see how it looks tomorrow. It’s been 24 hours since we’ve let our dough sit in the refrigerator and ferment for additional time in the cold. You can see that it’s puffed up a little bit, but it’s looking really good. So, now it’s time to get everything ready so our bread can proof. With picatcha ber, we are using round pans. So, this is kind of the signature look. I just like to use metal pie tins. And this recipe results in four of these, which sounds like a lot, but you can always freeze the bread and use it for later. So, with these, for some reason, they tend to stick for me a little bit more. So, try to be extra generous with the extra virgin olive oil that you put along the bottom and the sides of the pan. I always go through so much olive oil and I wonder why until I make all of these different breads and pretty much I use it for everything. So, I guess it makes sense why I I use so much extra virgin olive oil. At this point, we have all of our pans oiled. So, I’m just going to kind of form them in an assembly line and move them out of the way because now it’s time to divide up our dough. So, once again, I’m using my bench scraper. See, I told you this is going to come in handy. And we’re just going to divide the dough into four even pieces. Now, you’re more than welcome to weigh out the dough and measure it. Sometimes I do that if I want it to be very even, but other times, honestly, I just kind of eyeball it and hope that it will be okay. So, whatever you’re feeling that day works for me. Next, you’ll grab one of your pans and you’ll just start stretching it out, allowing gravity to kind of help you with this process, just like we did with the other dough. Now, it is a little bit unique because you are forming it into a circle and because the dough might be cold directly taking it out of the fridge, you may need to let it sit a little bit longer to allow the gluten to relax in order to form it into that full circular shape. So, this takes some time and a little bit of patience, but the circles that you’re going to get from these are so pretty. And I find that it just makes a really great presentation. Especially if you don’t cut it and you just set it out like on the table in a circle, it looks like really pretty. And that’s one of the awesome things about food, especially Italian food. It’s just so beautiful when you work with natural ingredients and ingredients that taste good. And that’s definitely one of, in my mind, the signatures of making Italian food. All right, so after each of these are stretched, you can see they’re still going to need some time to relax. So, I’m going to let them relax and then come continue to stretch them out. With the dough fully stretched, it’s time to dimple the top of the fkaca and then add on our oil and water topping. One of my favorite things about this bread is after the oil and the water topping, we get to add on even more toppings are tomatoes, olives, and oregano, and of course, salt. Uh, but this is just one of my favorite breads because the flavors are so delicious, and I think I just love anything extra. The toppings, the olive gives it a nice salty taste, and of course, the tomatoes are a great added texture as well as flavor. So, this is the topping for all four of them. So, make sure to kind of evenly divide it. Sometimes I run out of it at the end. So, just be careful that you’re kind of evenly dividing it and you can always go back and add more as you need. And make sure this one is really well mixed so one doesn’t just get water while the other one just gets oil. Looking good there. Now, you can put these on in whatever order you want. I tend to like to do the oregano and the salt first, so that way it sticks to the dough a little bit easier. If you’re making this in the summer, you could absolutely use fresh oregano instead of dried. You might need a little bit less just because it’s more potent, but that will be a great use if you have extra in your garden. Now, moving on to our favorite Maldon sea salt flakes. All right. Next, we’ll choose the olives. Like I mentioned, you can use different types of olives. If you prefer black olives or colamada olives or green olives, you do you. Any of them will work. They all taste great. I’ve tried all of them in my recipe testing and really just kind of depends on my mood or what’s on sale at the grocery store. And try your best to again get an even topping on each of them, making sure all the little spots are covered. With the tomatoes, you can put these either face up or face down. If you put them face down, the extra water is going to kind of go into the bread. So that’s what I like to do just to again get that really nice crust. But if you like the look of it the other way, that also works. And don’t forget that you could also use tomatoes fresh from your garden or canned tomatoes if it’s during the winter and you can’t find fresh ones that taste good. Once we have all the toppings on, we’re going to go ahead and proof the loaves. So you can do the same method just on top of your stove. if you do it inside your oven. Remember, don’t cover these with plastic or they will melt. So, this will take about an hour, an hour and a half, depending on your environment. With the bread all proofed and tripled in size, it’s time to put it into the oven, which should be about 430° F. We’re going to bake this for 35 to 40 minutes. And because there are four pans, you’ll probably need to put two on top and two on bottom. So, I personally like to rotate them halfway through baking to ensure that they’re evenly cooked on both the bottom and the top. Our fkaca is baked. And you can see how beautiful it looks once all of the toppings kind of melt into the dough. This is pretty easy to cut just in little triangles. But if there’s a better way that you like it, that’s fine, too. I just find that the triangles are easy since it’s circular. And then you’ll be able to see this nice crumb and all the toppings. Similar to the classic picata, before you eat or you serve this bread, you’ll want to reheat it in the oven. So, you can follow all of the instructions in the last lesson in this course to show you exactly how to reheat it and also how to store it. Since there are quite a few loaves, you can definitely freeze this and reheat it before you want to serve. And it still turns out perfect. Nothing wrong with the toppings or the texture. I hope that you enjoy this take on the classic fkaca bread and hopefully if you visit Pulio one day, you will be able to eat this in person in Italy.
Dining and Cooking