This month we made a popular Italian yeast bread: focaccia. It wasn’t too difficult to make and it came out mouth-wateringly delicious. I mean, I have the other half of the round I made earlier today sitting on my counter, salty, greasy (in a good way), crunchy and chewy, tempting me to finish it off before I check out for the night.

We had a choice of variants to try out, and I went with a sourdough version. I didn’t have enough time to make a true sourdough (a pity considering I live in San Francisco and the right mix of yeasts and bacteria is apparently just waiting in the air), but I did make a starter that got a good 14 hours of fermentation before I officially began the process of making the focaccia and I think it did make a difference in terms of the taste.

For the month of April Rachael of pizzarossa and Sawsan of Chef in Disguise took us on a trip to Italy. They challenged us to try our hands at making focaccia from scratch

I didn’t add anything in terms of toppings except a lot of coarse salt, and having tried the finished product, I can’t say this is a decision I regret. If I were to make this again (and why wouldn’t I?), I might give some rosemary or olives a shot. Or I might just add some za’atar and make some manaeesh. Yummmm. I also cut the recipe into a quarter, and it still yielded a nicely-sized round. The full recipe could probably have fit on a couple of large cookie sheets.

Photos after the jump.

Right out of the oven.

A gorgeous color right out of the oven. No, those aren’t sesame seeds, they’re coarse salt crystals.

Up close. Oh and, yes, those dimples all have a bit of olive oil in them. That’s what makes the crust so delicious!

The crumb was great: yeasty, the good kind of chewy, and nicely greasy (almost like a Chicago deep-dish style pizza crust).