Focaccia Bread—Tuesdays With Dorie, Baking With Julia

Grilled Chicken Pesto Focaccia Sandwich

This week’s Tuesdays With Dorie, Baking With Julia recipe is Focaccia.  I hadn’t made focaccia before (and can’t for the life of me spell it without looking it up every time).  I decided to make it last Friday and play around with a couple ideas for dinner.

I followed the recipe exactly, which you can get from our host this week.  Sharmini from Wandering Through is the host with recipe. 

After making the dough, it rises for an hour or so.  Then it is punched down and rises again.  After that, it then needs to spend 24 hours in the refrigerator, which is what develops all the bubbles focaccia is known for. 

Here it was ready for it’s second deflating.

After spending a day in the fridge, the three balls of dough are ready for their future.

For the boys, I just made a quick “pizza” with olive oil, mozzarella cheese, a little parmesan, and some pepperoni.  They ate it up!

Scott said he loved it just as it was with some dried (I didn’t have any fresh herbs) oregano and basil.

For Kevin and I, I carefully sliced open a couple pieces and made sandwiches like the one in the top picture.  Grilled chicken breast, some basil pesto I had in the freezer that I’d thawed, some roasted red pepper and some sharp cheddar cheese, I made them in to a panini to melt the cheese and toast the bread.  It was delicious!

With this third one, we didn’t eat it until the next night.  With our spaghetti dinner, I sprinkled mozzarella cheese and some more parmesan cheese on it and put it under the broiled (forgot to take pictures).  It was cut into breadsticks. 

I’d say it was all quite delicious and fun to play with.  You should try it.  It’s not difficult at all (the mixer does all the kneading).  You just need to plan ahead so you can make the dough a day earlier than you want to use it.