Focacciathe pan bread, dimpled and oiled

The Italian dough at its most relaxed: flour, water, yeast, salt, and enough olive oil that the crust stays soft and the crumb stays open. What you see on the table — the dimples, the oil pooling in them, the salt sitting on top — is not decoration, it is the move: the dough goes in a well-oiled pan, gets dimpled while it's still slack, and bakes into an oil-soaked sheet that is pulled apart by hand rather than cut. The dough logic is there in full, but the finish is the section's: the yeast does the rising, the pan does the shaping, and the oil does the crust.

Origin

Italy — Liguria, the pan bread

Difficulty

2 / 5

Servings

6–8

Prep

20 min

Cook

25 min

Total

~2 h, most of it proofing

Equipment

• A rimmed baking sheet or an oval roasting pan, 38×26 cm, that the dough can spread into
• A bench scraper, for folding and for the final shaping

Ingredients

• 400 g bread flour (or all-purpose — the structure will be a little tighter)
• 300 ml cool water (75% hydration — wetter than a loaf, looser than a baguette)
• 7 g instant yeast
• 10 g fine sea salt
• 60 ml good olive oil, divided between the pan and the dimples
• Fleur de sel, for the top
• Optional: cherry tomatoes, or a handful of rosemary, or a few slices of cured meat, for the final dimple

Method

1. Mix. Dissolve the yeast in the water, add the flour and the salt, and bring it to a shaggy, sticky mass. It's not a smooth dough — you're stopping well short of the gluten stage, because the wetness is what opens the crumb. Rest, covered, 30 min.
2. Fold, not knead. Wet dough doesn't knead on the bench; it folds in the bowl. Lift each side of the mass up and over the opposite side, a quarter-turn each corner — four folds, no more. Rest, covered, 45–60 min, until it's visibly puffed and the surface is smooth. That is the proof, done in two moves instead of one.
3. Into the pan. Pour half the oil into the rimmed sheet and coat the corners thoroughly. Turn the dough out into it, and with oiled fingers (or a scraper, pressing down from you outward) stretch it to nearly fill the pan. It should sit at about half the pan's depth, with room to double. Rest, covered, 45 min.
4. Dimple. This is the move. With the tips of oiled fingers, press deep, even dimples all over the surface — eight to twelve, deeper than they look necessary, because the dough springs back. The dimples are where the oil pools and the crust stays soft, and they're what separate a focaccia from a flat loaf. Drop the tomatoes, rosemary, or meat into the dimples now.
5. Oil and salt. Drizzle the remaining oil over the surface, generously, so it runs down into the dimples. Press it in with your fingertips. Scatter the fleur de sel on top, generously — the top is the only part that stays dry, so it carries the salt.
6. Bake. A preheated oven at 220 °C / 425 °F, the sheet going in on the middle rack, for 20–25 min until the top is deeply golden and the edges are setting. The bottom, through the oil film, will be crisp where the dough touched the pan and soft where it didn't.
7. Pull, don't cut. Rest 10 min, then pull the sheet apart by hand into rough rectangles while it's still warm. The oil should be pooling in the dimples; that's the point of the whole move.

Common failures

Variations

• Tomato and rosemary. Halved cherry tomatoes and torn rosemary in the dimples before the oil-and-salt step — the pan does the braising as it bakes.
• The garlic sheet. Thinly sliced garlic in the dimples before the bake; the oil and salt on top does the rest, and the sheet is the plate.
• Cornmeal crust. A scatter of cornmeal on the pan before the dough goes in — the bottom reads as a cornbread edge and pulls away in sheets.

What to serve with it