Homemade Focaccia Bread

I decided to try out making my own focaccia bread to go with with Chicken Salad Sandwiches.
It was pretty good.


Focaccia Bread

2 1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/4 cup warm water
2 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp Italian Seasoning
1 Tbsp Olive oil

Dissolve yeast in warm water.  Combine the flour, salt and seasoning in a mixer.  Add the water/yeast mixture.  Knead the dough until it is round and soft, yet a little bit sticky.  Coat a bowl with the olive oil.  Put the dough in the bowl and roll around to coat all sides with the oil.  Seal with plastic wrap and let sit in a warm place until dough doubles in size.  Stretch to a semi flat, round size and bake at 450 for 30 minutes.  The recipe I had said to bake it longer but by the time it had been about 30 minutes I checked on it and it was starting to get too done that it was going to be hard instead of a soft bread.  So I'd recommend 30 minutes checking the bread to make sure your oven cooks the same.

*If you don't want to wait around so long for it to raise, a quicker way to help bread raise, no matter if it's fresh, frozen or what you're doing with it....place it in a container, cover with saran wrap, turn the oven on to 170....as soon as it beeps that it's pre-heated, turn the oven OFF....then put the pan/bowl/whatever of bread in the oven.  The slightly warm oven will help the bread raise faster. :)

My mom taught me this trick when she does this with the frozen bread dough to make rolls or pepperoni pockets or something. )

 Enjoy!