Easy No-Knead Focaccia Bread Recipe

Bold Bakers, today we are making one of my most favorite breads, a no need focaccia with roasted garlic and rosemary. It is so delicious and really simple to make. It's a no need dough. So all we're going to do is just mix together our ingredients by hand and let it ferment overnight. In a nice big bowl here, I'm gonna add in some bread flour, also known as strong flour. Now for a focaccia, I definitely like to use a stronger flour, something around 13%, so bread flour is perfect. If you only have all purpose flour, then use that. But I will tell you, the beauty of a focaccia are all those lovely bubbles. And you get that bubbles from a strong flour, so I recommend that. So next we're going to add in instant yeast. Instant yeast I love, I use it in all my breads just because you can add it straight into your dry ingredients. If you use active yeast that has to be sponge, check out BiggerBolderBaking.com on the recipe and I'll tell you how you can use that. Next we're going to add in a little bit of sugar. It loves sugar, it uses it as food, it uses it for fuel, it helps it grow. And next we're going to add in some salt, keep the salt away from the yeast on the other side of the bowl, just so that it doesn't inhibit it from growing. Salt is so important in bread. I don't know about you, but I love focaccia because they're so savory and salty and yummy and oily. So definitely a nice bit of salt in there. Here I have some roasted garlic. Now roasted garlic is really simple. You just get two bulbs, you cut off the top, you coat them in olive oil and then you bung them into the oven 400 degrees Fahrenheit for around 30 minutes or so until they're lovely golden brown. I use my air fryer to do it because it's so much faster. Once your garlic has cooled, just pop it out into a bowl, look at that. Those lovely roasted cloves. Give it a good squeeze. So there's our lovely garlic. They're going to be so soft from the roasting, they're just going to disappear like butter. Now just give the yeast a stir, the sugar a stir, all those dry ingredients a stir together. Next we're going to add in our blood temperature water. You can do this with a wooden spoon, for some reason I'm doing it with a fork because that's what I had in my hand. And just mix this dough together. It's important that your water is blood temperature, you know, slightly warmed because that aids with the fermenting and the rising of the dough. So pop that into the microwave if you need to and just get it a little bit warm. The last thing we're going to do is take this quarter cup of olive oil that I have in the recipe, pour it around the sides. Here's what we're going to do, we're just kind of going to move the dough around and coat it in this oil. Look at that. I would recommend using a nice olive oil for this because the olive oil is such an important ingredient in a focaccia and that flavor will just really like just make this like top notch focaccia. So just use your good stuff. This is a no knead dough so we haven't put it on a machine. This is ready to go now there is no kneading. But what we do without kneading is we ferment and it does essentially the exact same thing as if you were to put it on a machine. Actually I disagree. It does an even better job because over time this dough will grow it will ferment and it will strengthen and on a machine we would normally strengthen the dough by kneading. We're going to use time to do the exact same thing but with fermentation comes flavor and giving it that long slow process to develop flavor, develop gases. It really just benefits the dough and then just think about that, that garlic sitting in there, all that oil, all that yumminess is going to be absolutely delicious. I'm going to let this ferment at room temperature for around 12 to 18 hours, minimum of 12 hours just to get nice flavor up to as much as 18 hours and then I'll show you what it's going to look like after that. So I fermented a dough yesterday so you could see what it's supposed to look like. Now come here to me, I want you to get a good look in here. You can see all these lovely bubbles. I'm going to pull back this, look at this. This is why we ferment. Look at all those beautiful strands, strong and stretchy. And you give a good whiff, number one you smell garlic. And number two you smell a little bit of booze and that's the fermentation. I remember when I first started making breads when I was 12 years of age and I thought that smell was bad and I would throw out my dough. Only until years later when I got into professional kitchens I realized that's what you're going for, that is flavor just like the way with sourdough. So this is exactly what we want and it's lovely and floating in oil which just makes me very happy. So I'm delighted with how this looks and how it smells. Now let me tell you something about bread dough. We're going to go in now and knock out the air and pull it and stretch it a little bit. Now by knocking out the air of the dough does not mean that you're weakening it and taking out all of that air, it's actually quite the opposite. It's not like a meringue. Taking out the air builds the dough back even stronger. And with focaccia we want those big air bubbles and by pulling and stretching your dough like this it makes it stronger and it makes it even better for it to catch those air bubbles during the proofing process. So go like this, pull it up from the sides into the center, knock out that air. It is quite soft but keep on going. Just get out that air and pull it into the center. Just like that. Beautiful. Now here I have a 9x13 pan. I'm going to add, yes, even more olive oil to the pan. Just a smidge. Just like that. Give it a rubby around. I love a focaccia that's really like oily and crust and on top and on the bottom and all the yumminess. Maybe I just love olive oil, maybe it's just that. Okay, anywho, in with our dough. Turn it over with the seam side down into your pan. If there's any leftover olive oil or anything else, get that in there. Oh, this piece of garlic, that's pretty valuable. In you go. Lovely. Now here's what I want you to do. With this dough, we're just going to stretch it a little bit into your pan and pull it into the corners. It's going to spring back and that's okay. We're just going to do a good job. Push it into the corners for now. We are going to cling wrap this nice and tight, get it nice and snug. Cover it well so the air doesn't get at it. I'm going to put a tea towel over it. Keep it extra warm, just like that. And then we are going to ferment this dough again. For another four to six hours, again, we are developing texture and we're developing flavor. Remember, we knocked out all the air. Now those four to six hours are going to give this dough time to build the gases back up again to get those big bubbles. So I don't want you to rush this. I want you to take your time. I'm going to put it over to the side. Let it sit at room temperature and let it do its thing. So here we are, four hours later. If you have the six hours, then use them, absolutely. Let's have a little gander. Lovely. You can see it has risen. So look at that, let me shake it for you. This is how you see a lovely active dough. See those bubbles here? Look at that. Lovely, beautiful. Exactly what you want from a focaccia. Now here I have my chopped rosemary, fresh rosemary, and then here I have a little bit of olive oil. I'm going to dip my fingies. Now 30 minutes before the end of your proofing, this is what I want you to do. I want you to stick on your oven also at this time, but go in with your oiled fingers and dimple the dough. I know it's hard for you to see this right now, but as I'm dimpling in my fingers, I can feel these bubbles popping underneath, which is just so lovely. Look at that, beautiful. Those are our dimples, and I am going to sprinkle over generously that rosemary. Beautiful. I'm going to give that a little pat on there so it sticks in. Lovely. Fantastic. That's the last thing we have to do. Let's wait for our oven to ding and then get it into a lovely hot oven. Our oven just dinged, so it's time to put it in. Bake your focaccia at 450 degrees Fahrenheit, 225 degrees Celsius for roughly 20 to 30 minutes. It loves a really hot oven, it doesn't take that long to bake. When your focaccia is lovely golden brown on top, it is time to take it out of the oven. You would not believe how amazing my kitchen smells with that rosemary and roasted garlic. As you can see on top of the focaccia, these lovely bubbles that we created over time with the fermentation. This is the sign to me that our focaccia on the inside has lovely, bubbly texture. And you know, although I did rosemary and garlic, you can really add any of your own variations and flavors to this bread. It is really versatile. Let me cut this loaf to show you what the texture is like on the inside. Just as I'd hoped, a bubbly crumb. And can you see how soft this bread is? That comes down to the olive oil that we baked it with. And just the nature of this bread when done right. This loaf has two things going first, the lovely spongy texture and also the amazing flavor that we put into it. Mmm. It's salty because of the olive oil. It has so much flavor because of the olive oil. And also the garlic, the rosemary. In my opinion, the sign of a good focaccia is greasy fingers at the end. If that's the case, this is one good bread. All in all, flavor, 10 out of 10. Texture, 10 out of 10. Happy Gemma. 10 out of 10. This is one fancy focaccia. If you just realized how awesome no need doughs are, then it's your lucky day. Stay put because I've got lots more no need videos for you to check out. I will see you back here again next week with a brand new recipe.