Focaccia with cheese and basil
Description
Baking comes together easily and quickly. The cheese-and-basil focaccia recipe I’ve described proves once again that baking bread at home is a fairly simple job. Just look at how few ingredients there are—you hardly need anything to make focaccia :) Yes, time-wise it’s a lengthy process, but most of that is dough resting. In short, homemade focaccia is quite straightforward. As for how good it tastes—trust me :) The bake is ready. Serve it at the table.
Instructions
- 1
Step 1
Let’s start by mixing all the dry ingredients: flour, salt, and yeast.
- 2
Step 2
Separately combine the olive oil with 320 ml of warm boiled water. Mix the dry mixture with the wet mixture and knead the dough for about 5 minutes. Then let the dough rest for about 40–50 minutes; it should rise to nearly double in volume. Next, gently punch down the dough once more and leave it for another half hour.
- 3
Step 3
Parmesan is a very hard cheese, so grating it on a grater is not the easiest task. I used a blender to grind the Parmesan.
- 4
Step 4
You’ll end up with a very pretty cheese crumble.
- 5
Step 5
Divide the dough, which you have kneaded twice, into two portions of almost equal size (one should be slightly larger than the other).
- 6
Step 6
Roll the smaller piece of dough into a flatbread and place it on a baking sheet dusted with flour. Sprinkle the flatbread with grated cheese and coarsely chopped basil leaves.
- 7
Step 7
Roll the larger piece of dough into a flat round too, then cover the first flat round with it. Gently tuck in the edges—the filling must be tightly sealed or it will leak out.
- 8
Step 8
Now—the main part. Press small wells into the focaccia, like in the photo, and drizzle a little olive oil into each. Let the focaccia rest like this for about 10 minutes.
- 9
Step 9
Bake for about 30 minutes at 180 °C.
- 10
Step 10
Enjoy!