Sourdough Focaccia

On How To Get Past Intimidation

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During the span of days between Christmas and the New Year, Andrew and I hosted my sister and her fiancé in our home. It was a good, hearty visit. I think it’s the thickest slab of time I’ve enjoyed with her since we lived as siblings in my parents’ house. As anybody will tell you, this kind of time with grown siblings is not frequently found, and must be savored when it comes.

We did a yoga class together, watched stand-up comedy, and ate pho. I forced her to watch a few episodes of Alone with me to be scared of the grizzly bears, jumped into frigid Atlantic in our skivvies, binged all four episodes of This Is A Robbery in one night, had brunch together, and other types of things you end up doing with a far-flung sibling who has come home for a short time.

I will freely admit that things got a little crowded in the house with all four of us occupying the same thousand square feet (along with two pets and a Christmas tree). Our blue velvet couch for instance: it’s very nice for two people, very “sit upright” for three, and there isn’t much space for four. We do have an outsized, slouchy-looking armchair, just to the left though. In fact, I am embedded in it right now, writing this Substack for you. But the trouble when you have two couples together for nine days is that nobody wants to be consigned away from their partner for the evening, every evening. (Nor are three people on a small velvet couch exactly comfortable anyhow.) Typically, our guests pretended they didn’t mind sharing the oversized chair and tangled together in it, along with their mini dachshund. I am thankful to report they’re quite good at yoga and this didn’t seem to permanently upset them, though I’m sure they could have used a good chiropractic adjustment by the end of the visit. If I felt a little guilty for sprawling across Andrew on our sofa, I only had to remind myself that we aren’t LA vegans (they are) and there’s no way Andrew and I could possibly switch places and maneuver ourselves into one chair for an entire evening. At least we had a queen bed in the guest room to offer them.

Their dachshund, Rumi, is very cute. A little entitled, but he’s the perfect size for a small house such as ours without making it feel impossible to sit down without sitting on a pet. Mozzie grew used to him pretty quickly and although they never made it to strict friendship, they formed a sort of mutual acknowledgement of each other and the only thing he chewed up irreparably was one low-value baseball card.

Showers and bathroom time was fairly easily divisible by one question: who needed to be where, when? Those who had to get someplace quickly, or were just coming home from the gym had shower priority for the sole shower in our home. The rest of us just sort of lumped it and caught a turn whenever we managed to realize that the other three were downstairs and the bathroom was unoccupied. 

I had never had the care and keeping of vegans before, but I shouldn’t have worried - they are very good at keeping themselves. Also (proteins costing what they do these days) I’m always ready to learn new ways of cooking. We cooked side by side, choosing dishes that could easily be adapted to become vegan, or making vegan meals with which I’d cook a separate protein (like salmon) for mine and Andrew’s plates. It was actually not that difficult, mainly because the basic formulas of the way we wanted to create a meal remain the same, whether or not you’re vegan: loads of veggies, a carb, Protein of Sorts. I’ve yet to make friends with tofu, but I’m good for a bean or lentil at any time. Hardest of all was remembering to use veggie stock instead of chicken bone broth when I made anything soup-ish. However, because they’re vegan for health and environmental reasons and not moral, they do make exceptions for regular old butter in certain contexts! Somehow I felt my footing solidify: if there’s one thing I know it’s butter, and you know what goes well with butter? A piece of sourdough toast.

In a burst of inspiration, I had remembered that sourdough bread is entirely vegan, and that I had never actually baked it for my sister before. In the early days of their visit I pulled my neglected starter out of the fridge, poured off the half inch of gray hooch from its surface, and fed it. To be honest, I thought I’d really killed it this time. I never had left it so long without a feed, and also thought that it had surely reached temperatures low enough to kill it, living as it did in the back of our not-so-regulated fridge that routinely freezes cucumbers solid. Somehow the thing still had some life in it. Careful coddling and feeding through the first half of their visit meant that, by New Year’s Eve, it was strong enough to bake with. I decided to make two recipes: the “lunchbox loaf” in Tara Jensen’s Flour Power (a Christmas gift), and a half-sheet tray of sourdough focaccia. Both recipes turned out just as delicious as you want the first bite of a sourdough loaf to be. I sort of haunted her fiancé to watch his face while he took his first bite. He was suitably speechless - not at my handiwork, per se, but at the impact of a real true bite of hours-old sourdough. I felt bad, afterward, for staring at him, but I wanted to see how he felt it measured up to the bougie LA bread they take a walk to buy each weekend.

When I shared about this baking haul on Instagram, several people wistfully mentioned wanting to get into sourdough baking but felt intimidated by the process. I totally understand this mindset; it still hangs me up sometimes. The thing is, people complicate things so much that it’s easy to forget that sourdough is an intuitive process, not something disconnected from our bodies and senses.

Sourdough baking has been practiced by bakers for actual thousands of years, well before highly complex systems for analyzing hydration and temperature fluctuations and flour quotients. You think they had instant-read thermometers in the Renaissance era? A quick Google search brings up the news that the oldest sourdough loaf ever found was excavated in Switzerland and dates back to nearly four thousand years before Christ, but that the sourdough baking form is likely far, far older. Ancient Egyptians baked sourdough bread. Indeed, if you’re ever intimidated or confused by how to time your sourdough process with your busy, modern life, you have only to realize that a lack of time to raise the loaves overnight was a key reason that the Israelites were told to bring only unleavened bread in their exodus from Egypt.

I love thinking about that: that this process of mixing, proofing, shaping, baking is as old as humanity itself, nearly. The process is worth learning if for nothing else than the delight found in helping something so deliciously unlikely grow out of flour, salt, water, and time. I often look at the ingredients in a recipe (like the one below) and think, “Surely not - that’s all?”

But truly - that’s all!

Conversely, you can choose to make it as complex and scientific a process as you want and I daresay - to a point - there is some benefit in perfecting your bake. I know that the research that has gone into a formula is what allows the rest of us to bake more intuitively ourselves; most of the guesswork is gone out of it, and that is often the result of careful work on the part of science-y bakers.

I guess what I’m saying is, I understand your potential hesitation about getting involved. I understand the need for getting one good, solid bake under your belt before you go all in on this sourdough thing, and I’m here to offer ballast.

That is why today’s newsletter is a recipe for sourdough focaccia. This recipe is baked on a rimmed sheet tray - no special equipment, shaping technique, proofing baskets, lames, or Dutch ovens required. The only thing I do ask (as I do in all my baking recipes) is that you use a kitchen scale. I got mine for $10 on Amazon at some distant point in my history and it’s still kicking.

This recipe feels like the ideal balance between hands-off and plenty of contact with the dough - the “bloops” alone are a sensation that ranks high up there on my list of ASMR responses. Bloopity, bloop, bloop, bloop. I let Anna get olive oil on her hands and heroically gave her half the sheet tray to bloop on her own. She appreciated it the proper amount; I know you don’t want to miss out.

And have I mentioned that this focaccia tastes just perfect? I want to share this recipe with you in the hopes that you’ll have a positive, sensorial experience and become more confident about approaching other sourdough bakes. Or, you know, just make focaccia on repeat. No judgment here. I understand the mania.

A word on sourdough starter: I have not personally begun a sourdough starter from thin air - my starter was given to me by a friend, and her starter was given to her, etc. I feel like this is a very time-efficient way to procure sourdough starter, because a from-scratch starter can take two to three weeks to build to baking strength, and at that point your interest as a beginner will have likely run dry, spent on babysitting a questionable vat of fermenting flour paste that may or may not actually take off. Another option is to visit a local bakery that deals in sourdough and ask for a bit of starter. Most bakeries will not allow you to pay for sourdough starter - this is a beautiful, wholesome little tradition whose origins I don’t know, but seems to be the prevalent attitude; most bakeries will give it away for free if asked, and some can even become your source for bulk, high quality flours if they sell to home bakers! If you are in the Norfolk, Virginia area and have no sourdough friends, try asking for a starter from Chelsea Bakehouse, or you may have luck inquiring at Prosperity Kitchen in Virginia Beach. Purchasing dehydrated starter online is also a good way to begin if you have no friends with starter (or no local bakeries) within your surroundings. Or, if you really want to make a starter completely from scratch and catch little wild yeastie boys in your own kitchen, there are many helpful tutorials online! 

As always, it is a good idea to bake with a starter that has been fed 6-10 hours before your bake: it should be lively and not slack, but coming off its high enough to have the munchies. This will optimize your rise! I like to feed my starter right before bed and mix up my dough first thing in the morning.

For maintenance feeds, I usually feed 30g of starter with 90g of water and 90g of flour. If I’m going to bake the next morning I usually feed a larger quantity so I can be assured of having leftover starter to continue feeding/growing. This feed usually looks like 50g starter, 150g water, 150g flour (or a higher volume) depending on how much starter I need to bake with the next morning! A quick way to figure this out is to check your recipe (this one uses 200g of starter). The “baking feed” ratio I show above makes a total of 350 grams of starter (50+150+150=350) so I know that using 200g out of a 350g batch leaves me 150g of safety starter! I’ll use 200g of starter in my recipe, and discard (or save for another recipe) all of the remaining starter except the 30g I need for a maintenance feed! I hope that makes sense - if it overwhelmed you, just know that the night before you make this recipe I recommend you feed a nice, hefty batch of your starter to bake with!

If you have any questions related to this recipe specifically, please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to solve your problems, clarify instructions, or otherwise cheer you on. You can do this! I believe in you.

Sourdough Focaccia

makes one half-sheet pan

200g lively starter 

1,000g all purpose flour

850g just-above room temperature water (maybe 78 degrees)

30g salt

1. In a large bowl mix starter, flour, and water with your hands. Cover with a towel and rest (yourself and the dough) for 45 minutes.

2. Add salt to the hydrated dough. Pinch it with a crab-claw motion to incorporate it thoroughly into the dough. Cover with towel.

3. Let this rise for three hours, turning dough gently each hour. A “turn” in this context means gently lifting up the side of the dough and dropping it into the center on each of the four sides, North, East, South, West, turning the bowl for easier access. I fold one hour after adding the salt, then once or twice more, setting an hour timer between each. On a colder day, my focaccia will sometimes rise slowly and I will extend this three hour rise into a four hour rise.

4. After this rising and folding period, pour a generous amount of olive oil into a rimmed half-sheet tray and spread to every corner with your hands. Use more oil than you think you’ll need. I use at least 1/3 of a cup, if not more. Pour the dough into this prepared tray, careful not to press too much air out of it as you gently stretch the dough to fill the pan.

5. If you want to add toppings (herbs, cheese, olives, etc.) now is the time to do it. Otherwise, oil the top of the dough, cover with plastic wrap, and proof for four hours without disturbing.

6. If you plan to bake right away, heat your oven to 450 degrees F. If you would like to wait to bake, you may stash your proofed focaccia in the fridge overnight and bake the following morning.

7. Once your oven is hot, oil your fingers well and bloop your dough all over! This is the fun part. Be aggressive about it, and push your fingers to the very bottom of the dough. Do not pop any of the bubbles that rise up! I like to also run my fingers (and any extra oil) around the edge of the dough to oil the pan again before baking.

8. Scatter the top of dough with Maldon salt, then slide the focaccia into the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until high and golden.

9. When it comes out of the oven, try to ease the dough away from the tray with an off-set spatula, and lift the dough out of the sheet tray and onto a cooling rack. If you don’t want to try it (this can be awkward and being splashed with hot oil is an occasional hazard) you may also just allow it to cool in the pan. I do like getting mine onto a cooling rack though, because the steam can escape without sacrificing the crispness of the focaccia! 

10.  Allow to thoroughly cool before cutting! I like to quarter the focaccia with a pair of kitchen shears, then fold at least two quarters in parchment paper and stash them in gallon zip top bags in the freezer for a later date. The quicker you can stash some of your focaccia, the less likely you are to eat it all and be sad.

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There you go! You did it - homemade sourdough focaccia. Did you feel the power of creating such a nourishing, simple, but magical thing? It goes straight to my head every time. What a perfect delight.