Sweet Focaccia | Focaccia Dolce

This is a delicious sweet focaccia recipe from the brilliant Italian Cucchiaio d’Argento blog. We have made this a few times and have found the recipe very easy to follow, with perfect results each time, so we wanted to share and translate it for those who can’t follow the original recipe in Italian.

This is not as sweet as a cake, but sweeter than a bread. It’s delicious as a breakfast cake/bread, on its own or spread with your favourite jam or spread (why not try it with our sweet cashew butter or our home-made nutella…coming soon!).

We have followed the recipe to the letter, aside from using plain flour to replace the 00 flour, and strong white bread flour to replace the manitoba flour, as these are more commonly available (and affordable) in the UK.

Ingredients – for the dough

• 400g plain white flour
• 100g strong white bread flour
• 120g demerara sugar
• 7g dried yeast
• 200ml whole milk
• 20ml extra virgin olive oil
• 110-130ml water
• 1tsp sea salt

Ingredients – for the crispy top

• extra virgin olive oil (approximately 1tbsp plus additional for greasing)
• approx. 1tbsp water
• demerara sugar

Method

1. Place the two flours, the sugar, yeast, oil and lukewarm milk into the bowl of a stand mixer.
2. Start mixing on a low setting with a K beater, drizzling in the water in a thin stream as you do this.
3. Once all the ingredients are mixed together, swap the K beater for a dough hook and mix it for approximately 15 minutes, adding the salt towards the end. The dough will be ready once it is smooth and elastic / bouncy.
4. Transfer the dough into a clean bowl and cover with clingfilm.
5. Leave it to rise until it has approximately doubled (around 2 hours). We tend to place it on a shelf in the airing cupboard, but any warm, non-draughty room will be fine.
6. Line and grease (with extra virgin olive oil) a 24cm round cake tin (we find a springform cake tin works very well for this).
7. Once the dough has risen, transfer it into the greased, lined tin.
8. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C fan.
9. Use your finger tips to create dips all over the surface and to help spread the dough evenly over the surface. We found this to be quite sticky, so you may not get perfect dips, but as long as the dough is spread reasonably evenly across the cake tin and the surface is a little rough/uneven, it will work.
10. Whisk together 1tbsp of water and extra virgin olive oil (this will turn into a thick emulsion) and brush this over the focaccia dough surface.
11. Sprinkle the surface with a generous amount of demerara sugar.
12. Bake the sweet focaccia in the pre-heated oven for 30-40 minutes until the surface is looking golden and a little cracked.
13. Leave to cool in the tin for approximately 15 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely, or serve warm!

This delicious sweet focaccia will keep for a few days in an airtight container, or wrapped in clingfilm and tin foil, but the crispy topping will lose its crispiness and will go more soft and sticky after the first day. It will still be delicious!

Sweet Focaccia | Focaccia Dolce | Gloriously Simple, Gloriously Good!