**The Art of Making Focaccia: A Step-by-Step Guide**

Making focaccia is a delightful and easy process that requires minimal kneading, thanks to the autolyzed dough method. In this article, we will guide you through the steps of creating a delicious and authentic Italian flatbread.

**Gathering Ingredients and Preparing the Dough**

We begin by gathering our ingredients, including fresh rosemary from our garden, garlic cloves, pitted olives, Asiago cheese, and bread flour. For this recipe, we have one little tiny clove of garlic and several big ones that we've cut in half. We also have a bunch of fresh rosemary leaves to add to our dough. Since we're using fresh rosemary from our garden, it's essential to be gentle when handling the stems to avoid any tough bits. If you find any, simply pull them off the stems, and discard them. The same applies to the Rosemary; we'll need to remove all the leaves from the stems to ensure they don't get into our dough.

As we prepare our garlic, we notice that it's quite tender, which is perfect for our recipe. However, we do want to avoid any rosemary or garlic stems in our dough, so we carefully pull off the leaves and set them aside. Next, we take a moment to inspect our ingredients; we have one tiny clove of garlic, several large cloves cut in half, fresh rosemary leaves, pitted olives, Asiago cheese, and bread flour. With all our ingredients ready, we're now prepared to move on to the next step.

**Adding Toppings to the Dough**

With our dough ready, it's time to add our toppings. We start by placing a few sprigs of fresh rosemary leaves onto the dough, followed by some large chunks of olives and garlic cloves cut in half. Since we're not punching down the dough yet, these toppings will be placed on top of it, allowing them to get incorporated into the dough during the baking process.

Before adding our toppings, we take a moment to oil our fingers; this is crucial when working with dough, as it can be quite sticky. We then give the dough a gentle punch down, which helps release some of the excess air and incorporates the toppings into the dough itself. This step is essential in creating a beautifully textured focaccia.

**Shaping the Dough and Adding Cheese**

With our toppings incorporated into the dough, we now take a moment to shape it into its final form. We gently scrape the sides of the bowl to remove any excess dough and then give the dough one last punch down to ensure everything is well combined.

Next, we sprinkle our Asiago cheese over the top of the dough, creating a beautiful golden crust that will add an extra layer of flavor to our focaccia. The cheese is carefully graded earlier, ensuring it's perfectly suited for this recipe.

**Baking the Focaccia**

Finally, we place our focaccia into the preheated oven and let it bake until it reaches its golden brown perfection. We use glass pans, but if you're using metal trays, it will take slightly less time to cook.

As the focaccia bakes, the aroma of freshly baked bread fills the air, and we can't wait to slice into it once it's cool enough. The result is stunning – a beautifully golden-brown crust with perfectly baked interior, flecked with rosemary leaves and topped with Asiago cheese.

**Tasting and Enjoying**

Once our focaccia has cooled down slightly, we take a moment to admire its beauty before slicing into it. And then, the moment of truth: taking that first bite. The flavors meld together in perfect harmony – rich olive oil, savory rosemary, nutty Asiago cheese, and crispy bread all come together to create an unforgettable culinary experience.

We hope you've enjoyed this step-by-step guide to making focaccia. Remember to like and subscribe for more recipe videos, and don't forget to share your favorite recipes with us in the comments below. If you'd like to support our channel, please consider becoming a patron on patreon – we'll put a link to our patrons' page in the description box below.

**Conclusion**

Making focaccia is an art form that requires patience, love, and attention to detail. With these simple steps, you can create a delicious and authentic Italian flatbread that will impress your friends and family. Don't be afraid to experiment with different toppings and ingredients to make it your own – after all, the beauty of cooking lies in its versatility and creativity.

As we wrap up this recipe guide, we hope you've had as much fun reading through our step-by-step instructions as we did sharing them with you. From start to finish, making focaccia is a delightful process that requires minimal effort but yields maximum reward. So go ahead, get baking, and enjoy the fruits of your labor!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign this week we have a delicious focaccia bread and we are going to be using an autoized um baking method for this or at least proofing method for this now before we get started I'd like to remind everyone that we have an affiliate link with Chef's temp I'll put a link in the description below and use code love your food on checkout for 15 off your order of a meat probe or kitchen thermometer we also have a patreon if you'd like to support us there and here's our ingredients so we have small purpose flour we're going to be using some basil and rosemary some olive oil some olives a little bit of maple syrup some garlic cloves some asiago cheese some instant yeast some salt and some water as well now we're using instant yeast here not active dry yeast and we're going to start by putting the salt and yeast in with the flour and just giving that a mix now until you add the water the yeast isn't activated so the salt's not going to hurt it just yet which is why we're not going to really get started here mixing it until we've added some of the water and some food for the yeast which is going to be the maple syrup now this is typically a little bit of sugar we're using maple syrup just to uh um number one we have a lot of it and number two this is just a little easier than sugar it's already dissolved it's already a liquid and we added a little bit of the water first because we didn't want to make little um like dumplings out of the out of the maple syrup in the flour so we just added a little bit of water first and then the rest of the water afterwards so we're just going to continuously uh scrape down the sides here until this is all completely combined now we're not going to be needing this we're not going to be uh you know getting it to a dough ball and then letting it need for ages and ages and ages we're going to let this um sort of sit overnight in the fridge so it's going to prove at a very low temperature and let the yeast do its thing this is called an autolized uh dough and it's a little different from how you do many other kinds of bread dough but it's it's quite an easy way to do it because you just mix everything together and then once it's all well combined like this you're going to flatten off the top and then we're going to add a few tablespoons of olive oil on the top and you want to use a really good olive oil because you're going to be using a lot and you can taste this in the final product so you want to use one that's good I want to make sure that it is all you know all covered uh we're trying to keep moisture in partially and also partially we're just adding you know that nice layer of oil on top now this Dough because it has that active instant yeast in there is going to rise a bunch it's going to easily double in size maybe even more even in the fridge so what we're going to do is cover it and then we're going to poke just a tiny hole in one corner as a vent to make sure that as it expands it's not going to blow the top off then we are going to get the next day after we've Let It Rise autolized overnight we're going to butter our pan and then put a little bit of the olive oil in the middle and you can see how much it's rise risen it just fills that bowl now it Rose a bunch overnight those nice big bubbles in there so first thing we're going to do is grease the fingertips just a little bit and punch it down and we're going to incorporate some of that oil so you can see that oil sort of partially Incorporated and partially sort of ran down the sides we're going to incorporate as much of the oil as we can while also making sure we get all of that nice dough off the sides of the bowl and then once that is done we are going to get the dough into our baking dish now we're using a glass baking dish that usually means that it's going to take a little bit longer in cooking time but as you can see here we're just going to spread it out gently and then we're going to cover it with another drizzle of olive oil now all of that oil does a few things number one the butter and oil on the bottom will keep it from sticking it will also help it you know have that nice golden crispy bottom as you normally like to see at the bottom of a Focaccia and it while it's proofing this second time and we're going to cover it again and let it proof and rise again it's going to once again help remove or prevent the loss of moisture I should say it's also again we're using really nice olive oil so we want to use that for the flavor a little vent in there as well and while that's doing its final proof we can get all of our sort of inclusions ready so we've got these beautiful fresh basil leaves from our garden we're just going to keep most of them on the sprig like that some of them we're just going to have as as plain leaves if you find any little tough bits of stem you can just get rid of those same with the Rosemary again this is fresh out of our garden so it's all quite tender but you don't really want Rosemary stems in there so we're just going to pull all the leaves off of the stems for the garlic now we have one little tiny one and then a bunch of really big cloves of garlic we're just going to cut those in half we're not going to do much else to those we're just going to sort of insert them into the uh the bread as it's baking it'll go nice and soft and sweet and uh same with the olives we're going to cut the pits out now if you have uh unpitted or if you have pitted olives then that makes this much easier we didn't have any on hand but we have these beautiful olives with pit still in them and it just takes a little bit of carving to get those off and there you go and we're going to keep those in pretty big pieces halves or quarters no smaller than that and then on top of everything is our asiago cheese now you can see once again it has risen really a lot since we uh set it to proof you can see a little jiggle in there and then we're going to start adding our toppings we're not going to punch it down just yet we're going to add our toppings and then once uh we're ready to start baking that's when we're going to sort of punch it down and uh and and make sure all of those little conclusions get partially buried in the in the dough for the baking process so on go the Rosemary and basil we're going to add our olives nice little chunks of olive there as well as our garlic cloves and again for now we're just going to put them out on top and then before we bake again we're going to be punching this down to uh to release a bunch of the excess air because it's going to puff up again as it's baking so we want to give it sort of that space to do that so there's the last of our garlic and then once again you do want to oil your fingers for this because the dough is quite sticky and just give it a good punch down you want to get rid of some of that extra air and you know incorporate some of those items into the dough itself so that they're not just sitting on top and then you want to just just give it a little uh scrape along the sides if you've oiled and buttered your pan properly it should be pretty easy and you just want to make sure it's not rising up the sides so you just want to give it a little scrape and uh you know a last pass to get rid of any last little bubbles coming up and then we're going to give it a nice uh thorough coating with our asiago cheese which we've graded earlier and that's going to give it this beautiful golden toasty cover and um from there this is ready to go into the oven so into our preheated oven and uh like I said we're using glass if you're using a metal tray it's going to take a little less time than we took but this was our final result we have that beautiful golden toasted cheese on top you can see the bread underneath is done it's got a golden hue as well you want to make sure it's not underdone um you can always use a kitchen thermometer to double check the inside temperature and then you just want to give it a little scrape along the sides to make sure it's going to come loose if you've oiled the pan appropriately it should come up pretty easily ours came out honestly in uh very easily you can see that beautiful golden bottom with those big bubbles that came up from the yeast uh you know really really standard for Focaccia that that nice texture on the bottom and uh absolutely delicious you want to wait until this is cool before you cut into it because you don't want to collapse so once it's cool and set you can cut into this and we found it absolutely delicious it was rich with that beautiful olive oil flavor those nice inclusions had sort of baked right into it and that's it really really easy not a whole lot of kneading involved in this one which is nice that's the beauty of the autolized uh dough process and we hope you'll give this one a try if you like this recipe please do like and subscribe and if you have any recipes you'd like to see Chef Caleb try the Channel please let us know in the comments below we'd like to thank our patrons over on patreon if you'd like to support us there I'll put a link for that in the description below as well and remember to love your foodforeign this week we have a delicious focaccia bread and we are going to be using an autoized um baking method for this or at least proofing method for this now before we get started I'd like to remind everyone that we have an affiliate link with Chef's temp I'll put a link in the description below and use code love your food on checkout for 15 off your order of a meat probe or kitchen thermometer we also have a patreon if you'd like to support us there and here's our ingredients so we have small purpose flour we're going to be using some basil and rosemary some olive oil some olives a little bit of maple syrup some garlic cloves some asiago cheese some instant yeast some salt and some water as well now we're using instant yeast here not active dry yeast and we're going to start by putting the salt and yeast in with the flour and just giving that a mix now until you add the water the yeast isn't activated so the salt's not going to hurt it just yet which is why we're not going to really get started here mixing it until we've added some of the water and some food for the yeast which is going to be the maple syrup now this is typically a little bit of sugar we're using maple syrup just to uh um number one we have a lot of it and number two this is just a little easier than sugar it's already dissolved it's already a liquid and we added a little bit of the water first because we didn't want to make little um like dumplings out of the out of the maple syrup in the flour so we just added a little bit of water first and then the rest of the water afterwards so we're just going to continuously uh scrape down the sides here until this is all completely combined now we're not going to be needing this we're not going to be uh you know getting it to a dough ball and then letting it need for ages and ages and ages we're going to let this um sort of sit overnight in the fridge so it's going to prove at a very low temperature and let the yeast do its thing this is called an autolized uh dough and it's a little different from how you do many other kinds of bread dough but it's it's quite an easy way to do it because you just mix everything together and then once it's all well combined like this you're going to flatten off the top and then we're going to add a few tablespoons of olive oil on the top and you want to use a really good olive oil because you're going to be using a lot and you can taste this in the final product so you want to use one that's good I want to make sure that it is all you know all covered uh we're trying to keep moisture in partially and also partially we're just adding you know that nice layer of oil on top now this Dough because it has that active instant yeast in there is going to rise a bunch it's going to easily double in size maybe even more even in the fridge so what we're going to do is cover it and then we're going to poke just a tiny hole in one corner as a vent to make sure that as it expands it's not going to blow the top off then we are going to get the next day after we've Let It Rise autolized overnight we're going to butter our pan and then put a little bit of the olive oil in the middle and you can see how much it's rise risen it just fills that bowl now it Rose a bunch overnight those nice big bubbles in there so first thing we're going to do is grease the fingertips just a little bit and punch it down and we're going to incorporate some of that oil so you can see that oil sort of partially Incorporated and partially sort of ran down the sides we're going to incorporate as much of the oil as we can while also making sure we get all of that nice dough off the sides of the bowl and then once that is done we are going to get the dough into our baking dish now we're using a glass baking dish that usually means that it's going to take a little bit longer in cooking time but as you can see here we're just going to spread it out gently and then we're going to cover it with another drizzle of olive oil now all of that oil does a few things number one the butter and oil on the bottom will keep it from sticking it will also help it you know have that nice golden crispy bottom as you normally like to see at the bottom of a Focaccia and it while it's proofing this second time and we're going to cover it again and let it proof and rise again it's going to once again help remove or prevent the loss of moisture I should say it's also again we're using really nice olive oil so we want to use that for the flavor a little vent in there as well and while that's doing its final proof we can get all of our sort of inclusions ready so we've got these beautiful fresh basil leaves from our garden we're just going to keep most of them on the sprig like that some of them we're just going to have as as plain leaves if you find any little tough bits of stem you can just get rid of those same with the Rosemary again this is fresh out of our garden so it's all quite tender but you don't really want Rosemary stems in there so we're just going to pull all the leaves off of the stems for the garlic now we have one little tiny one and then a bunch of really big cloves of garlic we're just going to cut those in half we're not going to do much else to those we're just going to sort of insert them into the uh the bread as it's baking it'll go nice and soft and sweet and uh same with the olives we're going to cut the pits out now if you have uh unpitted or if you have pitted olives then that makes this much easier we didn't have any on hand but we have these beautiful olives with pit still in them and it just takes a little bit of carving to get those off and there you go and we're going to keep those in pretty big pieces halves or quarters no smaller than that and then on top of everything is our asiago cheese now you can see once again it has risen really a lot since we uh set it to proof you can see a little jiggle in there and then we're going to start adding our toppings we're not going to punch it down just yet we're going to add our toppings and then once uh we're ready to start baking that's when we're going to sort of punch it down and uh and and make sure all of those little conclusions get partially buried in the in the dough for the baking process so on go the Rosemary and basil we're going to add our olives nice little chunks of olive there as well as our garlic cloves and again for now we're just going to put them out on top and then before we bake again we're going to be punching this down to uh to release a bunch of the excess air because it's going to puff up again as it's baking so we want to give it sort of that space to do that so there's the last of our garlic and then once again you do want to oil your fingers for this because the dough is quite sticky and just give it a good punch down you want to get rid of some of that extra air and you know incorporate some of those items into the dough itself so that they're not just sitting on top and then you want to just just give it a little uh scrape along the sides if you've oiled and buttered your pan properly it should be pretty easy and you just want to make sure it's not rising up the sides so you just want to give it a little scrape and uh you know a last pass to get rid of any last little bubbles coming up and then we're going to give it a nice uh thorough coating with our asiago cheese which we've graded earlier and that's going to give it this beautiful golden toasty cover and um from there this is ready to go into the oven so into our preheated oven and uh like I said we're using glass if you're using a metal tray it's going to take a little less time than we took but this was our final result we have that beautiful golden toasted cheese on top you can see the bread underneath is done it's got a golden hue as well you want to make sure it's not underdone um you can always use a kitchen thermometer to double check the inside temperature and then you just want to give it a little scrape along the sides to make sure it's going to come loose if you've oiled the pan appropriately it should come up pretty easily ours came out honestly in uh very easily you can see that beautiful golden bottom with those big bubbles that came up from the yeast uh you know really really standard for Focaccia that that nice texture on the bottom and uh absolutely delicious you want to wait until this is cool before you cut into it because you don't want to collapse so once it's cool and set you can cut into this and we found it absolutely delicious it was rich with that beautiful olive oil flavor those nice inclusions had sort of baked right into it and that's it really really easy not a whole lot of kneading involved in this one which is nice that's the beauty of the autolized uh dough process and we hope you'll give this one a try if you like this recipe please do like and subscribe and if you have any recipes you'd like to see Chef Caleb try the Channel please let us know in the comments below we'd like to thank our patrons over on patreon if you'd like to support us there I'll put a link for that in the description below as well and remember to love your foodforeign this week we have a delicious focaccia bread and we are going to be using an autoized um baking method for this or at least proofing method for this now before we get started I'd like to remind everyone that we have an affiliate link with Chef's temp I'll put a link in the description below and use code love your food on checkout for 15 off your order of a meat probe or kitchen thermometer we also have a patreon if you'd like to support us there and here's our ingredients so we have small purpose flour we're going to be using some basil and rosemary some olive oil some olives a little bit of maple syrup some garlic cloves some asiago cheese some instant yeast some salt and some water as well now we're using instant yeast here not active dry yeast and we're going to start by putting the salt and yeast in with the flour and just giving that a mix now until you add the water the yeast isn't activated so the salt's not going to hurt it just yet which is why we're not going to really get started here mixing it until we've added some of the water and some food for the yeast which is going to be the maple syrup now this is typically a little bit of sugar we're using maple syrup just to uh um number one we have a lot of it and number two this is just a little easier than sugar it's already dissolved it's already a liquid and we added a little bit of the water first because we didn't want to make little um like dumplings out of the out of the maple syrup in the flour so we just added a little bit of water first and then the rest of the water afterwards so we're just going to continuously uh scrape down the sides here until this is all completely combined now we're not going to be needing this we're not going to be uh you know getting it to a dough ball and then letting it need for ages and ages and ages we're going to let this um sort of sit overnight in the fridge so it's going to prove at a very low temperature and let the yeast do its thing this is called an autolized uh dough and it's a little different from how you do many other kinds of bread dough but it's it's quite an easy way to do it because you just mix everything together and then once it's all well combined like this you're going to flatten off the top and then we're going to add a few tablespoons of olive oil on the top and you want to use a really good olive oil because you're going to be using a lot and you can taste this in the final product so you want to use one that's good I want to make sure that it is all you know all covered uh we're trying to keep moisture in partially and also partially we're just adding you know that nice layer of oil on top now this Dough because it has that active instant yeast in there is going to rise a bunch it's going to easily double in size maybe even more even in the fridge so what we're going to do is cover it and then we're going to poke just a tiny hole in one corner as a vent to make sure that as it expands it's not going to blow the top off then we are going to get the next day after we've Let It Rise autolized overnight we're going to butter our pan and then put a little bit of the olive oil in the middle and you can see how much it's rise risen it just fills that bowl now it Rose a bunch overnight those nice big bubbles in there so first thing we're going to do is grease the fingertips just a little bit and punch it down and we're going to incorporate some of that oil so you can see that oil sort of partially Incorporated and partially sort of ran down the sides we're going to incorporate as much of the oil as we can while also making sure we get all of that nice dough off the sides of the bowl and then once that is done we are going to get the dough into our baking dish now we're using a glass baking dish that usually means that it's going to take a little bit longer in cooking time but as you can see here we're just going to spread it out gently and then we're going to cover it with another drizzle of olive oil now all of that oil does a few things number one the butter and oil on the bottom will keep it from sticking it will also help it you know have that nice golden crispy bottom as you normally like to see at the bottom of a Focaccia and it while it's proofing this second time and we're going to cover it again and let it proof and rise again it's going to once again help remove or prevent the loss of moisture I should say it's also again we're using really nice olive oil so we want to use that for the flavor a little vent in there as well and while that's doing its final proof we can get all of our sort of inclusions ready so we've got these beautiful fresh basil leaves from our garden we're just going to keep most of them on the sprig like that some of them we're just going to have as as plain leaves if you find any little tough bits of stem you can just get rid of those same with the Rosemary again this is fresh out of our garden so it's all quite tender but you don't really want Rosemary stems in there so we're just going to pull all the leaves off of the stems for the garlic now we have one little tiny one and then a bunch of really big cloves of garlic we're just going to cut those in half we're not going to do much else to those we're just going to sort of insert them into the uh the bread as it's baking it'll go nice and soft and sweet and uh same with the olives we're going to cut the pits out now if you have uh unpitted or if you have pitted olives then that makes this much easier we didn't have any on hand but we have these beautiful olives with pit still in them and it just takes a little bit of carving to get those off and there you go and we're going to keep those in pretty big pieces halves or quarters no smaller than that and then on top of everything is our asiago cheese now you can see once again it has risen really a lot since we uh set it to proof you can see a little jiggle in there and then we're going to start adding our toppings we're not going to punch it down just yet we're going to add our toppings and then once uh we're ready to start baking that's when we're going to sort of punch it down and uh and and make sure all of those little conclusions get partially buried in the in the dough for the baking process so on go the Rosemary and basil we're going to add our olives nice little chunks of olive there as well as our garlic cloves and again for now we're just going to put them out on top and then before we bake again we're going to be punching this down to uh to release a bunch of the excess air because it's going to puff up again as it's baking so we want to give it sort of that space to do that so there's the last of our garlic and then once again you do want to oil your fingers for this because the dough is quite sticky and just give it a good punch down you want to get rid of some of that extra air and you know incorporate some of those items into the dough itself so that they're not just sitting on top and then you want to just just give it a little uh scrape along the sides if you've oiled and buttered your pan properly it should be pretty easy and you just want to make sure it's not rising up the sides so you just want to give it a little scrape and uh you know a last pass to get rid of any last little bubbles coming up and then we're going to give it a nice uh thorough coating with our asiago cheese which we've graded earlier and that's going to give it this beautiful golden toasty cover and um from there this is ready to go into the oven so into our preheated oven and uh like I said we're using glass if you're using a metal tray it's going to take a little less time than we took but this was our final result we have that beautiful golden toasted cheese on top you can see the bread underneath is done it's got a golden hue as well you want to make sure it's not underdone um you can always use a kitchen thermometer to double check the inside temperature and then you just want to give it a little scrape along the sides to make sure it's going to come loose if you've oiled the pan appropriately it should come up pretty easily ours came out honestly in uh very easily you can see that beautiful golden bottom with those big bubbles that came up from the yeast uh you know really really standard for Focaccia that that nice texture on the bottom and uh absolutely delicious you want to wait until this is cool before you cut into it because you don't want to collapse so once it's cool and set you can cut into this and we found it absolutely delicious it was rich with that beautiful olive oil flavor those nice inclusions had sort of baked right into it and that's it really really easy not a whole lot of kneading involved in this one which is nice that's the beauty of the autolized uh dough process and we hope you'll give this one a try if you like this recipe please do like and subscribe and if you have any recipes you'd like to see Chef Caleb try the Channel please let us know in the comments below we'd like to thank our patrons over on patreon if you'd like to support us there I'll put a link for that in the description below as well and remember to love your food\n"