Soft and wondrously chewy olive oil focaccia is the easiest bread in the world to make, and it’s a perfect blank canvas for vegetable and herb floral designs. These edible art pieces are so cool I just had to decorate and bake a whole wheat version and show you how to make your own focaccia garden.
Edible bouquets and breadscapes, focaccia bread art has become a trendy project during this year’s stay-at-home times. May this post encourage you into the kitchen to try your hand at baking a focaccia garden!
Click here to PIN How to Make a Focaccia Garden!
How to Make a Focaccia Garden >>>
>>> For the focaccia dough, simply mix flour, salt, yeast, good olive oil, and water in a bowl with a wooden spoon–no kneading! Let the dough rise in the same bowl you mixed it in.
>>> While the wet dough rises in the bowl, prep your vegetable and herb color palette. Lightly coat everything with olive oil and put them in bowls and on plates.
>>> Once doubled in volume, turn the dough out onto a generously oiled pan, then using your hands, push and pat it around so it’s the same thickness all over. Drizzle with olive oil and spread the oil around.
>>> While your dough rises in the pan, arrange your flowers and blooms directly on top. You choose–make it as simple or elaborate as you like, orient your design landscape or portrait-style, shape it round or rectangular. It’s all good.
>>> When your garden layout is finished, poke holes with your fingers around and about and drizzle with more olive oil. Sprinkle with coarse flake salt. Bake about 25 minutes, until just done.
Take photos. Show off your bread art. Then eat it. Made with real food ingredients, time and effort, your fragrant focaccia gardenscape will taste even better than it looks!
You might serve your decorated focaccia as a snack, with drinks, or as the bread alongside soups or salads. For tasty sandwich buns, cut into 3- or 4-inch squares and slice in half horizontally. Awesome for burgers, like these veggie burgers.
Focaccia garden topping ideas:
For long flower stems:
- Asparagus
- Green onions. These make pretty bouquet ties too.
- Parsley stems with leaves.
- Chive stems with blossoms.
For flowers and blossoms:
- Thinly sliced red onion.
- Thinly sliced radishes.
- Spiralized sweet potatoes.
- Mini sweet red and yellow peppers, sliced crosswise.
- Larger yellow and red peppers, cut in strips for petals.
- Cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half and arranged as petals.
- Artichoke hearts.
Ground cover:
- Sliced sauteed mushrooms.
- Black olives
Frou frou and infill:
- Capers for flower centers and seed pods.
- Garlic cloves.
- Green pimento olives, cut in rounds.
- Sliced jalapeno or serrano peppers.
- Frilly dill stems.
- Sage leaves.
- Parsley leaves.
- Oregano leaves.
- Basil leaves.
- Finely chopped fresh rosemary.
- Tiny thyme petals.
A few edible garden tips:
- Make a rough sketch of your design so you have a overall plan to work from.
- Less is more—you don’t have to use every ingredient possible. (I had carrots cut and prepped and ended up not using them—they just didn’t fit with the theme.)
- Soften the firmer veggies like asparagus and sweet potatoes with a quick steam. (25 seconds in the microwave is good.)
What is focaccia bread?
Focaccia (foh-KAH-chyah) is sort of a scaled-down version of a pizza, think pizza without the sauce. The oven-baked Italian bread is shaped flat and liberally drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with coarse salt. Where pizza is more about the toppings, focaccia is usually about the bread itself, with toppings as simple enhancements. Except when it comes to edible focaccia gardens–here the focus is definitely up top!
To get your creative juices flowing–focaccia garden inspiration:
Today’s focaccia garden is built on my easy whole wheat focaccia recipe, featuring rosemary in the dough and sprinkled on top.
Note: I know that in some places right now, flour and other baking ingredients are scarce. With any luck, you’ll find some at your favorite store. I hope so here, because after making my focaccia garden, I need to re-stock. Why your store might be out of flour or yeast.
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How to Make a Focaccia Garden
Ingredients
- 3 cups white whole wheat flour 12 ounces, (see notes)
- 3 cups unbleached all purpose flour 13 1/2 ounces, (see notes)
- 1 tablespoon instant dry yeast (see notes)
- 2 ⅔ cups very warm water 120°F.
- 1 tablespoon fine sea salt
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for pan and top of focaccia
- Assorted vegetables and herbs, your gardenscape choices
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt, for sprinkling on top
Instructions
- In a large bowl, mix the flour with the yeast.
- With a wooden spoon, mix in the hot water, the salt, and the 1/4 cup of olive oil.
- Beat vigorously for about a minute. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise at room temperature until doubled in bulk—45 minutes to one hour. (If you want more time to prep, you can put the bowl in the refrigerator. That way the dough can rise more slowly, up to 4 hours.)
- While the dough rises in the bowl, prep your palette, the various vegetables and herbs for your gardenscape. Give the veggies a light coat of olive oil, putting everything in bowls and plates so they’re in one space, at your fingertips. You might even want to create a mockup of your design on another baking sheet.
- When you’re ready to build your focaccia garden, coat a large baking sheet (12 x 16-inch) with oil.
- Turn the dough out of the bowl onto the pan. It will be sticky. Pour a bit of oil on top and press until the dough fills the pan completely, trying to keep the thickness even. Preheat oven to 425°F.
- Rub a little olive oil over the surface. Arrange your edible flowers and blooms on top, gently poking them into the rising dough.
- In about 45 minutes the dough will have risen in the pan and be ready to bake.
- Drizzle a final dose of olive oil on the dough and vegetables, using oiled fingertips to spread it around. Sprinkle with the kosher salt. Bake about 25 minutes, until golden.
Notes
- White whole wheat flour includes the bran, germ and endosperm of the wheat grain. Not to be confused with white or unbleached all-purpose flour or whole wheat pastry flour.
- Feel free to substitute regular whole wheat flour ground for the white whole wheat flour, or if you prefer, you can use all unbleached flour to make your focaccia.
- You can substitute active dry yeast if that is what you have. Active dry yeast is a slightly different and weaker strain of yeast, so use 25% more (1/4 teaspoon more for each teaspoon of yeast) and dissolve the active dry yeast in warm water (105°-110° F) before adding to the dry ingredients.
- With instant dry yeast there is no reason to hydrate or first "proof" the yeast. As in this recipe, simply add the yeast to the dry ingredients and mix with a hotter water, 120°F.
- Fleischmann’s instant yeast is trademarked “RapidRise.” Instant dry yeast is a slightly different genetic strain than active dry yeast.
