Good homemade focaccia is irresistible, and impressive. Straight from the oven or savored later, focaccia should be crunchy with olive oil on the outside, tender on the inside, and taste of the moment. The toppings, whether garden-grown, wild-foraged, or hunted down at at your local farmer’s market or supermarket, offer endless ways to be creative. It is ideal rustic fare but impressive enough to share at a Thanksgiving table.
Here’s the no-knead focaccia recipe that makes the most of any season.
Photography by Marie Viljoen.
For years, my baking life has included focaccia. The round cast iron skillet I usually bake it in allows the bread to fit and travel snugly in a backpack for the botanical picnics I feed to adventurous attendees in just about every month of the year. But it’s also a comforting foundation for cheese suppers and a perfect dunk for soup lunches.
In spring, my focaccia may be laced with pungent ramp leaves, field garlic, dandelion flowers, nettle purée, or pheasant back mushrooms. In early summer, cherries with mugwort leaves, black currants, and elderberries, or chanterelles. Fall’s figs, persimmons, and local grapes follow. Winter’s focaccia feature hoshigaki (dried persimmons) and honey, dried aronia, or preserved mushrooms. The possibilities and improvisation are endless. Focaccia is an adaptable medium for edible creativity.
My go-to focaccia recipe has always been based on a kneaded dough. The dough is scented with Earl Grey tea and the soaking water for the fruit (the recipe is in the persimmon chapter of my cookbook Forage, Harvest, Feast). It makes a beautiful loaf, open to variation.
But since spring this year I’ve been improvising wildly on a no-knead focaccia recipe shared generously on Instagram by the founders of Keepwell Vinegar. (Based in Dover, Pennsylvania, their inspiring line of vinegars is available online; but they appear to excel at any yeast-related.)
Here it is:
You can see why it is is irresistible.
The deep appeal of this focaccia is that the wet dough is not kneaded. Mix, rest, fold, rest, fold. The fun part, dimpling the delicately jiggly dough with olive-oiled fingers, follows. Toppings happen. And after a brief, blazing bake, you have a glorious focaccia.
