Each one will get better! After a while you start to learn what the dough should look/feel like as you're making it so just keep making them lol
I love focaccia bread! :D
Edit: if you aren't already, prep the yeast the "old fashioned way" with warm water (less than 110°) and some sugar. Cover it and let it sit for 10 mins. I mix the dough, let it rise for about an hour, knead it again, and let it rise another hour keeping it warm over the oven. I happen to have a little exhaust under one of the burners so I put the oven on it's lowest setting so the exhaust can keep the mixing bowl warm. The yeast needs to stay warm!
I know some people use instant yeast or whatever or just toss the yeast in the mix and I don't think that works as well.
I hope so Lol. And yea I use the same technique leaving the yeast in water and suger, no timing though instead I wait for it to foam.
The oven exhaust is genius! Idk why I never thought of that
Thanks! Depending on what your lowest setting is you might want to put a plate down first or just raise the bowl a bit as it can get too hot sometimes
The trick I learned that helped most was to mix everything together just enough to combine, you want to get as little gluten as possible.
This sounds promising as I mixed till smooth and elastic then went on to stretch and fold. Next time I will try this out.
No problem if you haven't reached the airiness you are wishing for. I made some focaccia some times as well with some good airiness.
Maybe I can help you if you show me the used recipe or video.
I believe its
Hand full of chopped olives. 280 flour. 175 water. TSP yeast. TSP salt (but I opted for less.) TSP sugar. 2 Tbsp olive oil (I used rapeseed as higher smoke point and had at hand.)Added yeast, suger to warm water and left to sit, added the yeast mixture after foaming to the flour I mixed and it wasn't as watery as expected. Then added chopped olives, and rapeseed oil, every 30 minutes i gentally folded the dough, after2 hours i then placed in well oiled baking tray stretched dough to size, dimpled and let sit for 30 minutes - second rise. Placed in preheated oven at 200c for 25 minutes.
The result was a crispy outer, and a cake like crumb cooked through.
I knocked up a batch to cook tomorrow which is wetter and leaving in the fridge to later cook tomorrow.
That hydration is way too low. The recipe I use is 710g water and 850g flour which is over 83% hydration, your recipe is only 62.5% hydration. Even my normal bread recipe is higher hydration than that.
Also it's focaccia, you can't swap out the olive oil that is the defining ingredient and you need a ton of it. The bread should essentially be frying in oil while cooking.
I would also agree with stealth_cookies. In terms of hydration we just calculate the ratio of water / flour in a percentage form. So 175 / 280 is definitely too low for a bread-like food, just like focaccia. By using a higher hydration ratio we can get way more airiness on the cost of harder folding due to stickiness, but we use a simple trick for that. In my case I use the same methods and similar ratios as her, but with sourdough (https://youtu.be/O1WQTKuWWfM).
If you feel unconfident with handling high hydration doughs, then you could just start with 200g water, which would be 71.5%. I always go with a 75% or a bit higher hydration tbf. I would try to follow the steps as shown in the video, but generally speaking your steps seems to be good. Also to combat the stickiness when you're folding, you can just sprinkle your hand with some water and do the folding via that way. Don't worry, after every 20-30 min of resting, the stickiness of the dough will noticeably decrease or even vanish away completely.
stealth_cookies also mentioned the requirement of using olive oil. I would generally agree with this as well, but since olive oil is the "liquid gold", I tried using a simple vegetable oil as a replacement on my last focaccia and while the taste difference can maybe be a bit noticeable if you're examining it thoroughly, but it's still really great without strictly using olive oil as well.
EDIT: Also preferably use a bread flour instead of all-purpose, since the former can make a better gluten network structure and provide more airiness, but it's not the end of the world if you prefer to remain with all-purpose.
I have to recommend my #1 favorite focaccia recipe https://alexandracooks.com/2018/03/02/overnight-refrigerator-focaccia-best-focaccia/. It's super duper easy and basically foolproof, it just requires patience on the cold rise. I've never had any issues with it as long as the yeast is good and the water temp is right (~105-115f).
