In episode 27 learn how to make exceptionally easy and authentic gluten-free focaccia with a simple adaptation for dairy-free or vegan Italian bread. Join Melissa, gluten-free cookbook author, as she shares many easy, pro tips to make this audio recipe for gluten-free focaccia, so good, you’ll be fooled into thinking it’s the real thing!

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Recipes and Resources Mentioned

• Gluten-Free Focaccia Bread
• Frugal Gluten-Free Cooking

Recommended Equipment

• Kitchen-Aid Stand Mixer
• Flex Edge Paddle Attachment
• Instant Read Thermometer (Thermoworks)

Recommended ingredients

• Cup4Cup All Purpose Gluten-Free Flour
• Instant Rise Yeast
• King Arthur Measure-for-Measure

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Transcript

Hey everyone, I’m Melissa Erdelac, host of the Gluten Free Recipe Challenge podcast and creator behind the gluten free website Mamagourmand. Here we take beloved recipes you thought you never enjoy again and transform them into easy copycat versions just as good as the originals.

Okay, so I’m about to make your lives exponentially better in the form of bread, specifically bread that you thought you would never eat again for the rest of your life.

So not only does this Italian focaccia bread taste authentic, so much so that people don’t know it’s gluten free, but it’s actually a lot easier to make than traditional recipes. And I’m telling you, we deserve the win.

This recipe first appeared in my gluten free cookbook, which is called Frugal Gluten Free Cooking, and you could get it on Amazon. And in the book, I adapted several recipes to kind of pay… Homage to my Italian grandmother and my mom, and this bread was one of my favorites in it because I felt like it would have even fooled my pure blooded Italian fam.

But I have an important note. All the ingredients are easily adaptable for if you need a dairy free or vegan bread. But for this recipe in particular, I highly recommend using Cup4Cup flour for the best results. I’ve tried it with Bob’s Red Mill, and it drastically changed the texture of it. It was a lot more dense and gummy, and I would never offer that shit up to my grandma.

So if you can’t have dairy, a runner up would be King Arthur’s Measure for Measure. But if you can, go for the Cup4Cup. It will make the crumb so much better and taste so much better.

As for the rest of the ingredients, you do need milk, but you can easily swap out a dairy free milk for a vegan recipe.

You’ll need extra virgin Olive Oil, and this is a crucial ingredient when making focaccia for that signature bottom crust and the flavor and do not go light on the olive oil. The more, the better. It helps with the moisture of the dough and it creates those top and bottom crusts.

You also need yeast, but for this bread recipe, like all my bread recipes, I use a combination of yeast and baking powder to lift the bread. So it only rises for about 30 minutes, and then the rest of the lift comes in the oven while it’s baking, and that’s when the baking powder kicks in. If you’re using instant yeast, you could just add it directly to the dry ingredients. If you’re using regular active yeast, you’ll have to proof it in the warm water milk mixture first.

So for the toppings, you could just use like a kosher salt or a flaky sea salt. I use fresh rosemary, you could do freshly grated parmesan cheese, ground pepper, sun dried tomatoes, do olives, roasted garlic, caramelized onion, fresh herbs. You could do other cheeses like goat cheese or mozzarella or blue cheese. You could do meats like salami or prosciutto. Even do like roasted red peppers or sliced pears for like a little sweeter finish. If you want to go real fucking crazy, you could do that focaccia art, like look it up on Instagram, people go nuts over that stuff. To keep it simple, I just do some fresh rosemary, sea salt, and then a little bit of parmesan cheese.

Okay, so it’s time to hear how easy it is to make. So first combine 3/4 cup of water and 3/4 cup of milk in a measuring cup. Heat that for about one minute or until it’s lukewarm. And then I use my instant read thermometer to check the temperature. And you should have a temperature about, after one minute in my microwave, it reaches the temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit. So you’re looking for that lukewarm temp.

Once you have that, then sprinkle one package of yeast over the top, give it a little stir and let it sit for five minutes. And then meanwhile, you’re going to combine your dry ingredients. So in the large bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, and I will link in the show notes, my favorite paddle attachment that scrapes the sides of the bowl as it’s mixing. You combine 2 1/2 cups of gluten free flour, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, and 1 teaspoon of kosher salt, and just mix that on low speed until it’s combined, and then add in the milk yeast mixture along with three tablespoons of olive oil.

So once it’s combined, usually that takes about one minute. Then increase your speed to medium high and then beat it for six minutes. This just aerates the batter, breaks down the gluten free starches so they’re softer. And at this point your batter is going to be slightly thick, but still pourable. It’s really sticky, thick, but you could dump it out of your bowl and pour it into the pan. And that’s exactly what you want.

So now you prepare the pan that you’re going to bake it in. For best results, I use a 10 inch cast iron skillet, but if you don’t have that, then you could use a 9 inch cake pan. The cast iron skillet just really helps with that bottom crust to make it extra crispy. So that’s what I would recommend if you have that.

So at the bottom of the pan, drizzle on one to two tablespoons of olive oil, but just do two, it’ll be better. And then swirl it around the bottom of the pan and the side, and then you’re going to pour the focaccia batter into the pan. Put a little bit of olive oil on your fingers and then just smooth out the dough in the pan, or you could use a silicone, like a greased silicone spatula, and smooth it out.

Then drizzle more olive oil on top and use your fingers to press down indentations all throughout the dough so you make those signature dough pockets that are in focaccia bread.

Once you’ve made the indentations, then sprinkle the top with a little bit more kosher salt or rosemary or whatever toppings your heart is set on.

And then you just set it aside, uncovered for 30 minutes while you preheat the oven to 350. You don’t have to cover it. It’s just sitting out for a short period of time. Once your oven comes to temperature and 30 minutes has passed, then you bake it for 30 to 35 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

You remove it from the oven and then you can immediately sprinkle it with some Parmesan cheese to melt and put fresh ground pepper on it. Cool it in the pan for 10 minutes and then use a spatula to gently lift it out and transfer it to a platter that you could slice and serve it on or transfer it to a wire rack to cool completely.

Highly recommend. Eat it while it’s still warm because it’s fucking delicious. So for best results, eat the focaccia on the day it’s made. And luckily, this recipe… It only takes a few minutes to mix together in the bowl. It rises for 30 minutes, bakes for 30 minutes, so it could be done in a little bit more than an hour, so it’s pretty quick to make.

If you want to make it ahead of time, it’s also freezer friendly. Just be sure that it’s cooled completely before you wrap it up to freeze. For best results, I would recommend wrapping up the whole thing unsliced, but if you want to pull out individual slices, you could also cut it and wrap up those individual slices as well, and you can freeze it up to three months.

And when you’re ready to eat it again, for the slices, warm them up in the microwave for like 15 to 20 seconds just wrapped up in a paper towel, or you could rewarm the entire loaf, just place it on a baking sheet, cover it with foil, and then heat it in a 350 oven for about 10 minutes or until it’s like crispy and hot again.

Remember, you can find the full printable recipe on the show notes page. And to get to that, just click on the link provided in whatever podcast app you’re listening on. Or you can go to my recipe website, which is mamagourmand.com, and click on the podcast tab. Like I mentioned, this recipe is also published in my gluten-free cookbook, and I’ll provide a link where you could get the cookbook, the full recipe, along with any recommended ingredients or equipment I’ve mentioned.

The post Episode 26 Authentic Gluten-Free Focaccia Made Easy appeared first on MamaGourmand.