Focaccia
A very wet, oil-rich flatbread whose open, custardy crumb is a direct consequence of a hydration most doughs could not hold.
Also called italian flatbread (INTERNATIONAL), schiacciata (INTERNATIONAL)
Focaccia is a high-hydration yeasted dough, generously oiled, pressed into a tin and dimpled before baking.
The hydration is the product. At the water levels focaccia is made at, the dough is too slack to shape by hand in the ordinary way, and the gluten is developed by folding at intervals instead of kneading. That same slackness lets the gas cells expand into the large, irregular holes and the soft, almost custardy crumb the bread is recognised by.
The oil is not a topping. It coats the surface so the crust fries rather than bakes, giving the characteristic crisp, blistered top over a soft interior, and it enters the crumb enough to keep it soft for a day or two longer than a lean bread would stay.
Dimpling is functional. Pressing the fingers through the risen dough to the base of the tin stops the whole slab doming as it bakes and creates the wells that hold the oil and salt.
What it should be like
- Structure
- Large, irregular, open holes
- Tenderness
- Soft and slightly custardy in the crumb
- Crust
- Crisp and blistered where oil met heat
Where it comes from
Professional consensus
Agreed by professional bakers and baking-science texts, with an accepted mechanism, though not isolated by controlled experiment.
Associated with Italian baking, and with Liguria in particular for the oiled dimpled form most people mean by the word. Oiled flatbreads are far older and far more widespread than the name.
More in baking history and culture.
Why focaccia is a good first high-hydration bread
A wet dough is usually treated as an advanced technique because shaping one into a free-standing loaf is genuinely difficult. Focaccia removes that difficulty entirely: the dough goes into a tin and is never shaped.
What remains is the part that is easy — folding at intervals rather than kneading — and the part that is forgiving, because a focaccia that has over- or under-proofed slightly is still a focaccia. It is the high-hydration bread with the failure modes taken out.
Related
Part of
A yeasted wheat bread, differing from a loaf in shape and hydration rather than in kind.
What this product needs done
Structure building
A dough this wet stays a dough only because the gluten network holds it. Focaccia is a demonstration of how much water a developed network can carry.
Gas retention
The large irregular holes are gas cells the network held while they expanded, which is the whole visual signature of the bread.
Aeration
Yeast raises it. Nothing else in a focaccia generates gas.
Hydration
THE DEFINING REQUIREMENT. Focaccia is characterised by its hydration more than by any ingredient, and the open crumb is a direct consequence of water the dough would not normally be expected to hold.
Gluten inhibition
Oil is not a garnish here. It softens the crumb and keeps it soft, and it is why focaccia stays edible a day longer than a lean loaf.
Techniques this product depends on
At focaccia’s hydration the dough cannot be kneaded in the ordinary sense. Development comes from folding at intervals, which is why focaccia is the accessible entry to wet doughs.
Things that go wrong
The bread is crumbly and falls apart
High hydration and easy to over-ferment, which shears the crumb.
The dough is too sticky to handle
Recorded because the demand data asks about this fault under this product’s name, not because the fault is peculiar to it.
Judged against an open, bubbled crumb, so density shows sooner here than in a tin loaf.
A wet dough that fails to rise looks flat rather than small, and the causes are unchanged.
Spring shows as the dimpled surface rising and the crumb opening; the same proof and heat causes apply.
The crust is too hard, too thick or not crisp
Crust here is the oiled top surface, and it goes leathery by the same migration route.
The bread smells or tastes of alcohol, yeast or vinegar
Often proved warm and long, which is exactly the condition the fault describes.
Covered in
The bread families, and what actually separates them
Where hydration rather than enrichment is the defining variable.
History and culture
Flatbreads, and why almost every baking culture has one
A leavened flatbread, which shows that the flat form follows the heat rather than the leavening.