Overnight Focaccia: Why the Dough Starts the Night Before

Focaccia asks for nothing that isn't already in the kitchen: flour, water, yeast, salt and decent olive oil. What it does ask for is time, at a moment when nobody is hungry yet.

For one baking tray: 500 g of flour, 400 ml of lukewarm water, 5 g of dried yeast, 10 g of salt. At that hydration the dough is too slack to knead, and that is the point. Instead of working it, you fold it: reach under the edge with a wet hand, lift, fold it into the middle, turn the bowl, four times around. Repeat the whole thing three times at twenty-minute intervals. Then cover the bowl and put it in the fridge overnight.

In the morning the dough looks nothing like it did the night before: bubbled, slack, visibly bigger. It goes straight from the fridge onto a generously oiled tray and rests there for an hour until it reaches room temperature. Cold dough cannot be coaxed into the corners; it pulls straight back.

Only then do you press down through the dough with spread fingertips, all the way to the metal. The dimples this leaves are not decoration. They hold the olive oil in place while everything around them rises, which is what gives focaccia its split personality of crisp top and soft crumb. Scatter coarse salt and rosemary over it, then bake at 220 degrees for twenty to twenty-five minutes.

That cold night in the fridge is not a detour, it is the actual work. At low temperature the yeast keeps going slowly, the dough builds structure without turning sour, and the finished tray tastes of more than just yeast and salt. If you have two spare hours in the morning you can prove it at room temperature instead; the result is fluffier, but flatter in flavour.