I made my first focaccia

And it was a disaster 😭😂

I didn’t take any pictures because I’m ashamed of the result 😂

Actually I’ve been wanting to make a focaccia for a while but I would always postponed because I had never manipulated dry yeast. I was afraid of messing up and surely I did.

Here were my problems:

1- The dough was too sticky

I know focaccia dough is very sticky but the recipe I was following was saying that after 5min of kneading it was supposed to be smooth.

After more than 15min battling and sweating with the sticky dough (and yes I added some extra flour in the process), I decided it was enough and let it rest in a bowl greased with olive oil.

I almost wanted to just throw it away in the garbage but I decided to just go through all the steps until the end because I thought that maybe it could be saved somehow…

2- The sheet pan I used was too big

Even though it was the required size (1/4 sheet pan), the dough was not enough to cover all the pan.

So I’m wondering if it’s because I didn’t put enough flour or if I didn’t wait long enough for the dough to rise. Or maybe both? 🤔

But anyway…

I didn’t have another smaller pan so I stubbornly used the 1/4 sheet pan and tried to fit the dough in it.

3- I overcooked it

The cooking time was 30min at 230°C.

But since my dough was too flat because I overstretched it to fit the pan, 30min was too much. I should’ve ended the cooking around 20min.

To sum up

It wasn’t that much of a disaster because the taste was good… as long as you didn’t eat the borders which were just too hard to chew 😂

Here’s what I’ll improve for next time:

• I’ll add more flour until I get the smoothy texture I’m supposed to have.
• I won’t overstretch the dough.
• I won’t overcook it and check around 20min then every 5min until it’s golden brown.

I don’t know when I’ll try again though. The kneading part is my nightmare 😂