Small-batch focaccia bread

I tried this King Arthur recipe yesterday and boy, did it turn out great. I added a bit of fresh rosemary from the garden but otherwise followed the directions exactly. Doesn't take much time -- just a bit of attention over a few hours. It's just me, so the small size is perfect. The bread is so incredibly delicious that it would be easy to wolf it down in a couple of minutes. Cut horizontally it would make a spectacular sandwich bread -- may be for the greatest muffuletta of all time.

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/small-batch-cheesy-focaccia-recipe

Sounds good. Nice to see an actual recipe here instead of just pictures of food.

The recipe says to use a Baking Stone or Steel in the oven. Did you have that, or did you just bake it on an oven rack?

I have a round pizza stone that usually lives on my Traeger grill as I like to throw some smoke on my pizzas but it worked great in the oven for this bake. I only preheated to 475. Just didn't think 500 would make a difference and it did not.

Looks awesome. I've been baking a ton of sourdough lately and have been meaning to post some pics. Nothing like fresh bread!

I need to give sourdough another try. I just never could get in the rhythm to keep the starter going. When I was in high school waay up north in Humboldt County, California, circa 1970, we used to drive over to Eureka to a Portuguese fish market and restaurant and buy two attached kidney-shaped loaves of real sourdough for a dollar. I have never, ever had bread that good in the intervening half century.

It's definitely a bit more labor intensive but worth it. I like to feed my starter once a week and keep it in the fridge until Friday morning when I'll feed it again so it's active and ready to start a few loaves Friday night. I'm really liking this one recipe that's an overnight no-knead loaf and quite frankly it turns out just as good as the traditional sourdough boule with a lot less work.

Would

I have made some of the no-knead boules as well -- in the dutch oven lined with parchment. It's just not sourdough.

Did you make those using a starter or with yeast? Mine is made with a starter and comes out very close to my sourdough boule. The boule is made with a levain that's made with a small amount of my starter.

I made those with yeast, using the "no-knead artisanal bread" process. You simply mix the ingredients, put them in a container in the fridge overnight, form it into a round the next morning and bake it in a cast-iron dutch oven with a small pan of boiling water beneath it to create a few minutes of steam.

Gotcha. When I make my no-knead I always use starter instead of yeast, so it gives it more of a sourdough flavor. My recipe allows for 60g starter or ¼ tsp yeast. The first time I made it I followed the recipe and didn't knead or stretch and fold. The last 2 times I've treated it more like a boule and done several stretch and folds after the overnight sit, then let it rest and rise a bit more in a banneton basket. It's definitely resulted in a better oven spring and a lighter crumb with more air introduced.

I'm also using a more unique flour (Einkorn flour) which is a bit more difficult to work with, but my gut doesn't get along well with regular wheat flour.

Nice!

On the focaccia, how thick did it end up being?

Bet it was very good, love almost any kind of fresh bread right out of the oven