There was once I stopped eating carbs. That was the worse 2 minutes of my life.

Joke aside, I love carbs and I have actually been one of those who have thought carbs is the enemy, that it is unhealthy and something you only should eat when you want to treat or cheat. Luckily, I have come to more common sense today and instead of stressing about eating carbs, I enjoy every single minute and bite when eating. So yesterday when I had made homemade focaccia to my family dinner, I wasn’t surprised that the whole bread - people usually have for a whole week - ended up being eaten only within our dinner.

Let us talk about Focaccia

Focaccia is one of my absolute favorite breads. What’s your favorite? Focaccia is originally from Italy, and is a bread which is flavored with olive oil and salt. Many people - including myself - also flavor the bread with rosemary and garnish with various toppings like tomatoes, olives, feta cheese, onion, sun dried tomatoes etc.

Focaccia is a rather simple bread recipe. One must just be careful with the yeast and fermentation so that the bread gets soft and fluffy and not dry, and also use lots of high quality olive oil. That is the two keys.

My focaccia is vegan. I tried garnish my bread with vegan feta cheese but it didn’t work at all because our vegan cheese in Sweden is based on coconut oil and it just melted away while in the oven. So I had a few wholes in my bread when taking it out from the oven but I just filled them with more feta cheese after the baking. :P So be careful when picking the feta cheese, because this is obviously not the way it “should be”.

You can really just garnish with optional ingredients, but I recommend you to use ingredients known in the Italian or Mediterranean Kitchen. They work very well together.

Focaccia

INGREDIENTS:

a half package á 25 g yeast

3 dl lukewarm (37 degrees) water

1/2 dl olive oil

3/4 tbsp salt

1 tbsp agave syrup

7,5 dl plain flour

+ more olive oil and optional garnishing

HOW TO MAKE:

• Crumble out the yeast in a bowl. Add your lukewarm water, olive oil, agave syrup and salt and mix together until the yeast has combined.

• Add a little bit of flour at a time and knead the dough thoroughly for a few minutes.

• Cover the dough with a baking towel and let it ferment for at least 30’. Have it stored in a warm place, for instance by an element.

• Knead the dough on a floured table until it is flexible.

• Oil a baking sheet/baking pan (approx ) with a thin layer - don’t forget the edges - and spread out some sea salt on top.

• Press out the dough in your baking pan as evenly as possible. Cover it with a baking towel and let it rise for at least 30’.

• Heat oven to 220 degrees C.

• Make some holes in the dough and fill the holes with for instance red onion, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese and olives.

• Ripple over plentiful of olive oil over the whole bread and brush it out over the whole bread. Spread over fresh or dried rosemary, and finish with sea salt.

• Bake in the lower part of the oven for approx 20’ and until golden.