Focaccia is such a handy dinner bread – you can spice it up with whatever suits your dinner! If you only have a good basic recipe for the dough, you can concentrate on the really good stuff: the toppings! Here I have topped with fried onion, walnuts and gorgonzola and I will serve it for a pasta tonight. Yum!

Other suggestions for topping: Olive oil, chopped rosemary and some roasted garlic (crushed). Or sun dried tomatoes and pesto. Or olive oil, oven roasted root vegetables and a little goat cheese. The variations are endless!

1 bread, 25 x 35 cm large

50 g fresh yeast
360 g water (3.6 dl)
1 tsp granualted sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
520 g of wheat flour (8.67 dl)
2 tsp salt

Topping
2 tbsp olive oil
1.5 red onions, sliced ​​and fried in butter
1 dl walnuts, roughly chopped (about 40 g)
70 g gorgonzola

Method
1. Crumble the yeast into a bowl. Add the water (cold) and stir until the yeast is completely dissolved. Add sugar and olive oil.

2. Add all wheat flour and salt and knead the dough on medium speed for 8 minutes. It’s a wet and sticky dough, but do not add more flour!

3. Grease a bowl with olive oil,  put the dough in it, cover with plastic film and let rise for 1 hour.

4. Put baking paper in a roasting pan, 25 x 35 cm. Scrape down fermented dough into the pan and push the dough to the corners with your fingertips. If it keeps bouncing back – cover with a towel , leave for a few minutes and do it again. Cover and leaven for 30 minutes.

5. Set the oven to 225 C°. If you have a pizza stone, you can put it in the oven – then the focaccia gets a little extra love from below!

6. Topping: Drizzle the olive oil over the focaccia and spread it all over the dough using a brush (but do it carefully – we don’t want to puncture the fermented dough). Sprinkle red onions, walnuts and crumbled gorgonzola on the focaccia. Bake in the lower half of the oven for 20-25 minutes (93-98 c° interior temperature).