Still not focaccia 😭
If nobody has mentioned this to you yet, use a high gluten flour (pizza flour) which hovers at around 11-14% gluten I think. This allows to make dough with really high hydration. Experiment with seeing whats the minimum amount of flour you can add to the water before it stops being liquid. (Make sure sure you are kneading a lot, dough can appear liquid but it could be the gluten wasn’t worked enough yet) Once you find that limit work closely to that range. As others have said here, activate the yeast with warm water and sugar, you can probably get away with adding more yeast than you think. Make sure that bitch is foaming. Let it sit in a warm environment for it to grow. And when you stretch it out, us minimal flour, again let it sit in a warm environment to let it grow. You can spray water on top of it while it sits to keep it from crusting
Each one will get better! After a while you start to learn what the dough should look/feel like as you’re making it so just keep making them lol
I love focaccia bread! :D
Edit: if you aren’t already, prep the yeast the “old fashioned way” with warm water (less than 110°) and some sugar. Cover it and let it sit for 10 mins. I mix the dough, let it rise for about an hour, knead it again, and let it rise another hour keeping it warm over the oven. I happen to have a little exhaust under one of the burners so I put the oven on it’s lowest setting so the exhaust can keep the mixing bowl warm. The yeast needs to stay warm!
I know some people use instant yeast or whatever or just toss the yeast in the mix and I don’t think that works as well.
The oven exhaust is genius! Idk why I never thought of that
Thanks! Depending on what your lowest setting is you might want to put a plate down first or just raise the bowl a bit as it can get too hot sometimes
I hope so Lol. And yea I use the same technique leaving the yeast in water and suger, no timing though instead I wait for it to foam.
I have to recommend my #1 favorite focaccia recipe https://alexandracooks.com/2018/03/02/overnight-refrigerator-focaccia-best-focaccia/. It’s super duper easy and basically foolproof, it just requires patience on the cold rise. I’ve never had any issues with it as long as the yeast is good and the water temp is right (~105-115f).
The trick I learned that helped most was to mix everything together just enough to combine, you want to get as little gluten as possible.
This sounds promising as I mixed till smooth and elastic then went on to stretch and fold. Next time I will try this out.
