Vegetable Focaccia

Hello food lovers,

You loved our focaccia recipe with bacon and shallots, this time we're offering you a 100% vegetable version.

A focaccia that smells like summer with peppers, aubergines, tomatoes and onions. ;-)

Let's go!

To make this vegetable focaccia of 34.5 x 26.5 cm, you will need:

Focaccia dough

- 500gr of flour

- 20gr of fresh yeast or 7gr of dry yeast

- 366gr of lukewarm water

- 9gr of salt

Vegetable topping

- 1/2 yellow pepper

- 1/2 red pepper

- 1/2 aubergine

- 1/2 red onion

- 1/2 white onion

- 5 cherry tomatoes

- Olive oil

- 1/2 tbsp of Italian herbs

- 15gr of basil leaves

To start, we are going to make the dough for our focaccia.

We will use the same base as the bacon and shallot focaccia, only the topping will change.

Focaccia dough

In a large bowl, pour 500gr of flour.

For this recipe, we used fresh cube yeast, but you can also use dry yeast (7gr).

Crumble 20gr of fresh yeast over the flour.

Pour 366gr of lukewarm water, be careful it must be lukewarm, not hot. If the water is too hot, the yeast will lose all its effect.

Using the dough hook, knead your dough at speed 1 for 5 minutes.

We will add the salt at the end of the first 5 minutes of kneading.

The yeast and salt must never be in direct contact. If they are, the yeast will lose its effect.

Using the balance spoon, weigh 9gr of salt. The balance spoon is great for weighing small quantities. :-)

Continue kneading for 5 minutes at speed 1 then increase the speed to 2 for 5 minutes.

There you go, our dough is ready. Form a nice ball and cover it with a damp cloth.

Let the dough rise for one hour at room temperature.

While our dough is rising, we will prepare the topping.

Vegetable topping

To start, we need half a red pepper.

Cut the half pepper into strips.

Do the same with the half yellow pepper.

In a bowl, place the red pepper strips and the yellow pepper strips.

Set them aside while you prepare the rest of the vegetables.

Cut half a red onion and half a white onion into slices of about 0.5 cm.

Set the onion slices aside in a bowl.

We will now prepare the last vegetable.

Cut half an aubergine into slices of about 0.5 cm.

We will now pan-fry the different vegetables.

Pour 3 tbsp of olive oil into a pan and sauté the yellow and red pepper strips for about 5 minutes.

Keep the peppers slightly crunchy, as they will be cooked again once on the focaccia.

Once cooked, pour them into a bowl.

Then sauté the onions for 2-3 minutes in the same pan as the peppers.

Then set them aside in a bowl once sautéed.

For the aubergine slices, add 3 tbsp of olive oil again, then sauté them for about 5 minutes.

As with the peppers, don't overcook them, as they will be cooked again with the focaccia.

There you go, all the vegetables are ready. :-)

To make a beautiful focaccia, we are going to use the Silikomart focaccia mould.

Thanks to this mould, you will get a nice even bake and a lovely regular shape.

Place the mould on a perforated tray.

The dough has now been rising for one hour. It has doubled in volume.

Give it 2-3 punches to knock the air out.

Pour the dough into the focaccia mould.

Lightly flour the dough and spread it out by hand. You'll see, the dough is nice and elastic and will be very easy to spread.

Cover it with a damp cloth and let the dough rise again for one hour at room temperature.

After one hour, the dough will have risen nicely.

Using your fingers, dimple the dough.

Before adding the focaccia topping, brush the dough with 21gr of olive oil using a pastry brush.

Preheat your oven to 180°C fan heat.

Spread the sautéed vegetables over the dough to create a beautifully topped focaccia.

Cut 5 cherry tomatoes into 4 and spread them over the dough.

As you can see in the third photo, we have a beautifully topped and ultra indulgent focaccia. ;-)

Sprinkle 1/2 tbsp of Italian herbs over the vegetables.

Bake the focaccia for 25 minutes in the middle of the oven.

After 25 minutes of baking, you will have a beautiful golden focaccia.

Let it cool for about 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a cooling rack.

In the meantime, chop 15gr of basil leaves.

Spread the basil over the focaccia.

There you go, the focaccia is done.

Enjoy it cold or warm, it will keep for 2 days well wrapped.

I hope you'll enjoy this new focaccia recipe and that you'll want to try it.

I wish you a lovely Sunday, food lovers.

Sophie

P.S.: All the equipment used can be found at the bottom of the recipe.