How To Make Homemade Focaccia Bread For Beginners

Want to make cafe-style focaccia bread at home? Today you’ll learn how to make homemade focaccia bread for beginners. Yup – you can make perfect focaccia on the very first try. Get all the steps for making focaccia dough right here.

In this guide you’ll learn everything you need to get started…

1. Stretching focaccia dough
2. Dimpling focaccia (to make the crunchy bubbles on top)
3. How to top focaccia with different ingredients

Let’s bake focaccia from scratch!

Why is focaccia bread so good?

This beginner’s focaccia bread recipe will help you get a crispy brown crust on focaccia – – your very first try making it. The inside turns out fluffy with pockets of air.

With this step by step guide, you’ll learn the techniques for making focaccia rise before baking it, so the dough turns out nice and chewy on the inside and crispy on the outside.

Are you hungry yet?

Ingredients for making focaccia bread at home

Ingredients are simple. In this focaccia recipe, you’ll use flour, dry yeast, water, sea salt, and extra virgin olive oil.

How to make homemade focaccia bread for beginners

Step 1. In a large mixing bowl, stir together bread flour and dry yeast with a fork, until yeast is incorporated into the flour. Make a small well in the center of flour and set aside.

 Step 2. Pour salt water mixture and 2 tablespoons olive oil into the flour bowl.

Stir with your hands or spatula until a ball forms.

Step 3. Grease a clean large mixing bowl with ½ tablespoon olive oil. Add dough to the bowl. Knead dough by folding each corner into itself for about 1 minute.

The dough will pick up olive oil as you knead is, which is perfect.

Cover dough with a damp towel and let it rest for 15 minutes.

Step 4. Knead dough again for one minute. Let the focaccia dough rest again, covered with a damp cloth.

Repeat this step one or two more times, for a total of about 45-60 minutes of kneading and resting.

Step 5. Cover focaccia dough with plastic and let the dough rise on the counter for 2 hours, or in the fridge overnight.

We have left focaccia to rise in the refrigerator fridge for a few days – 6 days to be exact – and it’s stayed fresh and improved over time.

The dough should be almost double in size.

Step 6. Liberally spread ½ tablespoon of olive oil on the bottom and sides of a 9×13” baking pan. All areas the focaccia will touch should be covered. Add focaccia dough to the oiled baking pan.

Stretch dough, pushing it to fit the shape of the baking pan.

Tips for stretching focaccia dough

It might be hard to stretch the dough to the pans corners. If you’re having trouble stretching the dough, cover the dough with a damp cloth and let sit for 10 minutes.

That will give the dough time to relax, making it easier to stretch.

Step 7. The first rise in the pan.

Once the dough is stretched to fit the corners of the baking pan, cover the baking pan with a damp towel and set aside in a warm area for 45 – 60 minutes to rise.

A sunny window or oven with just the light on (which will make it ~85 degrees) is perfect.

Step 8. Dimple the dough.

Once the dough rises in the pan, set out a small bowl of water next to the raw focaccia dough. Dip your fingertips in water, then dip them in focaccia dough to create small holes.

Press your fingers down so they tap the bottom of the pan.

The dough will be sticky, so continue to dip them in water, then the dough, until the top of the focaccia dough is covered with little holes.

Either warm focaccia dough to rise by setting it in a sunny window, or turn on the oven light to create a warm atmosphere to rise the dough.

Step 9. Time for the final rise. Once the dough is dimpled, cover with a damp towel and set aside in a warm area (sunny window or oven with the light on) for 45 – 60 minutes to final proof.

Step 10. After the final proof is complete, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Top the dough with ½ tablespoon of olive oil.

Add any toppings at this time.

Step 11. Bake focaccia for 20-30 minutes until the top is golden brown and the internal temperature reads 190 degrees on a thermometer.

Transfer focaccia bread to a wired baking rack. Add a drizzle of olive oil if desired.

Doesn’t the seeded focaccia bread above look fantastic? Learn how to make focaccia bread with Everything Bagel Seasoning.

Tasty toppings to add to focaccia bread

There are so many ways to infuse focaccia bread with flavor inside and out.

• Roasted garlic
• Red wine caramelized red onions
• Roasted cherry tomatoes
• Fresh herbs like rosemary to make it an Italian inspired recipe
• Olives
• Pesto
• Seeds

Are you thinking of starting an aerogarden to grow your herbs right at home? Get a break down on just how does aerogarden work. Read this guide to learn more!

Love pizza? See how to make pizza with store bought dough.

How long does homemade focaccia last?

Focaccia lasts up to 5 days on the counter. Store homemade focaccia in an airtight container or a plastic bag.

Experiment with how long to let focaccia rise

The focaccia on the left was left to rise for just a couple hours in the fridge. The one on the right was left to rise in the fridge for 6 days.

Maybe we set out to do this experiment, or perhaps we got busy and forgot we left focaccia in the refrigerator for a week – or 6 days to be exact.

But whatever the reason, this experiment shows that leaving the dough to rise longer can create a lighter, fluffier focaccia bread with lots of holes.

Love dough? Check out this guide to Trader Joe’s dough.

Baking focaccia as a hobby

I was more than happy to support my husband’s newfound love of bread baking.

We’ve made plenty of homemade pastas together, and there was that one holiday season he became obsessed with baking homemade apple pie with from-scratch crust, but his new obsession with focaccia bread has further solidified that we’ll pretty much be together forever.

Once you get the basic process to making focaccia down, there are so many toppings to try.

Want to learn more about bread as a hobby? Get inspired to start a sourdough bread baking hobby with tips from cookbook author and food blogger Meredith Laurence from Blue Jean Chef.

Know what tastes great on focaccia?

Sous vide soft boiled eggs over sous vide brisket for a gourmet brunch.

Sous vide chicken breast and mozzarella for lunch. I love Italian inspired recipes.

In case you didn’t notice the theme here, it’s one of my favorite foodie hobbies: cooking sous vide recipes. Find the most extensive resource of my sous vide recipes is in  The Home Chef’s Sous Vide Cookbook.

Final tips for making focaccia for the first time

• Let dough rise for as little as two hours and as long as 6 days in the fridge.
• Use a high-quality olive oil to top the bread.
• Experiment with different toppings as your focaccia bread baking skills grow.

And my last tip… use this bread for everything – – starting in the AM. Bacon and egg focaccia breakfast sandwiches are a gourmet treat for weekend brunch. Turning leftover focaccia bread into next-morning breakfast sandwiches is one of my favorite ways to use up a batch of fresh baked bread.

Love baking bread but want a better way to store it? Check out this post that answers the question: can you freeze bread?

Are you a foodie, too?

Are you up for another fun, and fast dough recipe? Make homemade pizza dough for your own DIY pizzas. An easy family dinner idea everyone can help with! If you’re not a baker, no worries—I walk you through every step of the process in my new video tutorial.

Find me on Instagram @sipbitego.

Love to make restaurant-style food at home? Subscribe to the Sip Bite Go channel on YouTube.