Homemade Focaccia Pizza
The BEST focaccia pizza recipe! If you’re looking for a chewy and crispy pizza, you’re at the right recipe. I really think this is the start of my bread baking journey, for my first time making focaccia without a recipe, this came out fantastic. Though this recipe takes time to proof and rise, the actual prepping process is pretty easy. This is also a great pizza to make if you want a pizza night, but don’t want to hassle of a pizza stone or rolling out stubborn dough.
What is Focaccia?
Focaccia is a type of flat Italian bread that is typically made it olive oil. Focaccia is usually garnished with sea salt, rosemary and many other herbs and vegetables. It can be eaten with soup or bread dip.
How to make Focaccia dough?
There are many recipes for this dough including no-knead dough and even 48 hour doughs. My recipe is an overnight recipe and requires kneading. Kneading the dough (any bread dough) enables strong gluten formation. This will get you a chewy and an good structured dough.
Flour
- Bread Flour: My favorite flour when baking bread is bread flour (LOL). The biggest difference between bread flour and all purpose is the higher protein content in bread flour. A high protein content will give you a more glutinous bread. Bread flour also will sometimes require more water, since there is a higher protein content.
- All Purpose Flour: This is going to your typical day to day flour. My only tip when using all purpose, is to start with slightly less water to avoid over hydration.
Tip: When buying white flour, look for brands that have “unbleached” in the label.
Yeast
- Instant Yeast: I use the Rapid Rising Yeast. This is fast acting yeast that causes the dough to rise faster. I do not know the measurement when using fresh yeast, so just use the instant kind 🙂
Stretch and Folds
- This is what gets you that amazing chewy texture. I find doing them 3-4 times is just perfect. There is such a thing as too much gluten, that will cause a super dense dough.
Par Baking
- Instead of adding all of your toppings on the raw pizza dough, adding it to a partially cooked crust will get you a fresher tasting pizza. Tomato sauce and cheese baked for a whole 30 minutes will have a different flavor and texture than ones baked for 10 minutes.
- Bake at the bottom rack for the first 20 minutes to get that beautiful bottom crust. After adding the toppings, bake at the middle/top rack for 10 minutes.
Toppings
- Tomato Sauce: A must have, I’ve linked my quick and cheap sauce recipe.
- Mozzarella Cheese: You can choose fresh or pre-shredded. Fresh mozzarella will give you a chewier, denser cheese pull, while low moisture mozzarella will give you a lighter cheese pull.
- Fresh Basil: I’m a huge advocate for only using fresh herbs rather than dried. The flavors just don’t compare in my opinion.
Homemade Focaccia Pizza
DifficultyHard
Servings24
Prep time13 hours30 minutes
Cook time30 minutes
Total time14 hours
This chewy and crispy focaccia pizza is the perfect sheet pan appetizer.
There is not rolling or using a pizza oven, this is super beginner friendly for those who haven’t make pizza or bread before.
Ingredients
For the Dough
- 2 1/2 Cups Room Temperature Water
- 1 Packet (2/14 Tsp) Instant Yeast
- 2 Tsp Honey
- 5 Cups Bread Flour
- 2 Tsp Salt
- 1/3 Cup Olive Oil, Total
For the Toppings
- 1 Cup Tomato Sauce
- 10 Oz Fresh Mozzarella
- 1/4 Cup Chopped Basil
Instructions
For the Dough
- 1
In a large mixing bowl, add the room temp water, honey and yeast. Mix lightly and let the yeast bloom for 5 minutes.
- 2
Add the bread flour and mix roughly. Add the salt and continue to mix.
- 3
Knead the dough with your hands until a rough dough ball has formed. Let it rest for 30 minutes covered.
- 4
Start your first series of stretch and folds by pulling one side of the dough up and folding it over the rest of the dough. Do this on all 4 sides of the dough. Repeat this process 3 times in 10 minute intervals.
- 5
After all of the stretch and folds, the dough should be a smooth ball. Now add olive oil all over the dough. Cover and refrigerate overnight or for 12 hours.
- 6
The should now be risen and airy. Add around 3 tablespoons of the olive oil to a sheet pan and dump all of the dough out. Roughly stretch the dough in the desired shape. (this doesn’t need to be perfect or all the way to the edges either. you just want the dough stretched in a general shape of the sheet pan.) Let this dough proof covered in a warm place for 2 hours.
- 7
Preheat the oven to 425F.
- 8
The dough should almost double in size and be very airy. Now add the rest of the olive oil on top of the proofed dough. Stretch out the dough to the corners of the pan and start dimpling the dough. The olive oil will fill in the little dimples.
- 9
Place the focaccia on the bottom rack of the oven to get a nice crusty undercarriage. Bake for 20 minutes.
- 10
Add whatever topping you want to your pizza. I just did my tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella. Bake for another 10 minutes on the middle or top rack
- 11
Once you remove from the oven, garnish with basil and red pepper flakes! Enjoy fresh or reheat in the airfryer!
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