Focaccia Bread

So how many of your know how delicious the focaccia bread at Macaroni Grill is? Let me tell you how EASY it is to make. (There is one caveat to this recipe--you need a bread machine.)

Focaccia Bread
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 egg beaten
4 cups flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons skim milk powder
1 packet yeast (2 teaspoons if you have a big jar like me)

For Toppings:
olive oil
salt
pepper
rosemary (fresh or dried)
oregano
onions
garlic/garlic powder
parmesan cheese

Put all the ingredients in your bread machine except the yeast, making sure to put the flour last. Make a shallow hole in the flour and put the yeast in the hole. Set your bread machine to the dough setting and let it ride! Mine takes an hour and 40 minutes for the dough cycle.

After the dough cycle ends, dump the dough onto a VERY well floured board. It's a sticky dough, so you want to be generous with the flour. At this time, put your pizza stone in the oven and set your oven to as high as it goes. We want the pizza stone to be super hot so the bottom of the bread sears and gets super crusty. If you don't have a pizza stone, don't worry. Just put a cookie sheet in the oven and let that get hot instead of the pizza stone.

Take a serrated bread knife and cut the dough in half. Again, be very generous with the flour so it doesn't stick. Put one half of the dough onto a pizza peel or cookie sheet covered by a piece of parchment paper. If you have a pizza peel use it, if not, just use another cookie sheet. Also, if you feel comfortable not using the parchment paper, feel free to, but using parchment always makes it easier for me to put the dough onto and get it off the pizza stone.

Once you have your set up ready with the pizza peel or cookie sheet and half your dough, stretch and flatten the dough into a circular shape. If you want a larger and thinner loaf, let the dough rest for a bit before forming it. If you're not super picky, just let the dough tell you how big it wants to go. Once you have your desired size, pock the dough--use your floured fingers to make little indentations into the dough, so it doesn't rise too much during baking. But if you want it to be super puffy, just skip this step!

To top the focaccia, first brush it with olive oil. You can be generous, because this will help the bread to be moist. Then add whatever toppings you want. You probably want to add salt no matter what toppings you use, unless you are using a lot of parmesan cheese. This past time I used salt, pepper, dried rosemary and garlic powder.

When you get ready to bake the loaf, turn the oven down to 450F, and slide the loaf onto the pizza stone. If you use parchment like me, just slide the parchment right onto the stone, if you use the peel without the parchment, just make sure it's well floured and the dough should slide right off. Bake the loaf for 8-10 minutes, until it's browned. If you used cheese, you can always turn the broiler on during the last minute or two to really get the cheese bubbly and yummy. After taking out of the oven, let the loaf cool on a cookie sheet and brush the loaf again with olive oil.

This bread is delicious by itself, but if you want to make things a little more special, pour up some olive oil with pepper, or olive oil with a little balsamic vinegar for dipping.

Enjoy this! And make extra because it is SO good.