Focaccia: Hard to spell, easy to make

This week we ran out of bread, but wanted something to go with our pasta. Despite having a bit of bad luck with bread recipes in the past, I decided to make focaccia since we had all of the ingredients on hand. The base of the bread came from The Joy of Cooking, which I got for my birthday last week (thanks Ev!). The toppings were whatever was lying around in the pantry.

The base is a pretty simple combo of traditional yeast, flour, olive oil, and salt. First you add a package of dry yeast to 1 and 1/3 cups of warm water. Wait 5 minutes and things should start to get foamy.



Next add 3 and 1/2 cups of white flour, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and 1 tablespoon of salt. This focaccia needs some lovin' so you need to knead for ten minutes, no joke.





Once the dough is nice and firm you can spread it out onto a baking pan.



Set it in a warm place for an hour and a half so it doubles in size.



Poke the top of the bread with your fingers.



Next is the toppings. The possibilities are endless, but we went with oregano, basil, Romano cheese and lots of pressed garlic in olive oil.





We found this little gem in our head of garlic. What...the...



Bake at 400 F for about 30 minutes.



I think it ended up tasting quite good considering it was the first time I made it. We served it with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping. Yum.