Filled Focaccia

aka... crazy mutant bread of goodness


For the bread:
9oz/250g strong white bread flour
1tsp easy blend dried yeast
5oz/150ml water
1dsp olive oil, plus extra for greasing
1tsp salt

For the filling:
Anything you have in the house. I had:
Tomatoes
Olives
Ham
cheese



This was a real recipe, but it didn’t really work for me. I was supposed to have a bread maker, which I don’t, and I was supposed to have things like Parma ham, which is pricey, so I kind of took the idea and ran with it.

I mixed the dry ingredients and added in the wet ones and kneaded for about 5 minutes or so, basically till it felt good and springy and compact.

I let it rise once, then cut it in half. I rolled out the bottom as large as I could, and laid it out on a baking sheet. I covered the dough completely with slices of ham, grated the cheese and sprinkled it over the top, then threw on a few torn up olives (they were the black oil cured kind). I rolled out the other piece of dough so that it would cover it all, and after covering it I pinched the ends together so nothing would leak out.

I let it rise for about half an hour, though it didn’t really. Then I poked my fingers into it’s surface to make the classic focaccia look, threw some sliced tomatoes and salt, and the rest of the olives over the top and tossed it into the oven at 200c/400f for 20-25minutes.

It came out like a funny mutant pizza bread thing, but boy was it tasty! For some reason the whole center of it inflated in the oven, though no other part of it did. As It was cooling it sort of fell back to a normal looking thing, but by then we were so distracted by eating it, that who cared?

Because it didn’t rise as it should have, I suppose technically this was a failure, but it was really tasty, and even my older son had many pieces. I’m going to make this again next time I need an easy to transport picnic type food.

Next time I will probably make a bigger dough though, as this one had to be rolled pretty thin.