This is an awesome recipe to start making sourdough bread with! It’s just white flour, water, salt, and starter. It’s a pretty wet dough and the recipe is pretty robust — if you have slightly too much or too little water, it will still turn out great. If you’re looking to be a little more adventurous with sourdough technique, I’d recommend trying the Spelt Sourdough Loaf! If you don’t have bread flour, you can try with all purpose but your bread might not be as springy in the end.
If you’re looking for a super quick focaccia recipe, you can augment the sourdough activity by adding a half packet of yeast (~3.5 grams) to the dough at the beginning. The first rise will only be a few hours and the second rise will be as short as 30 minutes! If you’re looking to only use yeast, you can try a full packet (7g) of yeast to replace the sourdough (I’ve never done that though) — but I really highly recommend using sourdough if you can because the taste is just 2000% better!
Ingredients:
- Materials: mixing bowl, measuring cups and/or scale, 9×12″ baking pan (I use a glass one, but you can use whatever you have)
- ½ cup (~110g) active sourdough starter (see below for starter instructions)
- ~1 ⅔ cup (390g) warm water (will depend on starter consistency)
- ~1 ¾ cups (210g) bread flour
- ~1 ¾ cup (210g) all purpose flour
- 1 tsp (6g) salt
- Optional, for quicker baking: 3.5g dry active yeast
- Toppings: 2 tbsp olive oil, rosemary, coarse salt, tomatoes, etc.
Instructions:
8am 1-3 days before: Get your starter to at least 1 cup active the morning you’re ready to make these. If you don’t have a starter, make some! It’s super easy–check out my Sourdough Starter recipe. I always save a small bit of starter in the fridge to re-activate (add some flour and warm water and bring to room temperature) the day or two before I make any sourdough bread. You can test if your starter is ready to use by the float test (see if it floats on water).
7am: In a large bowl, add ½ cup of your starter. Add about 1 ⅔ cups of warm water, about 1 ¾ cups of bread flour, 1 ¾ cup all purpose flour, and 1 tsp salt. Mix these together to form a wet, smooth dough. Let sit to activate and rise for 8-10 hours at room temperature, until bubbly as in the photo above. (Seal it well to prevent the dough drying out.) (If you add yeast, this rise time will be closer to 2-3 hours.)
Note: if you want to prepare the dough the night before, do this first rise in the fridge for ~24 hours.
5pm: The dough should have about doubled or tripled in size and have a lot of air bubbles. When you and the dough are ready, oil a large baking pan. Dump the dough into the baking pan (don’t add any more flour). Seal this pan well to prevent drying out during the second rise as well. Let rise for 2-4 hours at room temperature (if you used yeast too, this rise time will be closer to 1 hour; if you did the first rise in the fridge, this rise time will be closer to 4 hours). It will spread to fill the pan and be bubbly! (Alternatively, you could place this in the fridge for a longer rise too.)
7pm: Pre-heat the oven to 425˚F. When it has reached this temperature, pour olive oil on the top of the dough and dimple it (see my video!) with your fingers. Sprinkle on toppings. Bake at 425˚F for ~30 minutes, until the top is golden brown. Let sit for a few minutes, then remove from the pan and enjoy fresh and warm!
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