PULL-APART FOCACCIA
Putting Susan Spungen's party trick into action! PLUS: Six Spring Cookbooks I'm loving now.
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Hello!
It’s been a doozy of a spring so far—jam-packed and stunning, with every fruit tree and flower in the yard in blossom, from the peach and plum trees to the flower quince and all the tulips and daffodils I remembered to plant this past fall. It’s heaven.
It’s also been an absolute knock-out spring for new cookbooks. They keep arriving at my front door and with each one, a breath of fresh air, personality, and new recipes, infusing my kitchen with possibility.
Certain times, when a new cookbook arrives, I latch onto a particular recipe but don’t get around to making it for months—or even a year. Take this pull-apart foccacia bread from
’s vegetable-rich cookbook Veg Forward: Super-Delicious Recipes That Put Produce at the Center of Your Plate, which came out last spring, but is full of winning recipes for right now. I had the book splayed open to this page for months on my desktop, and then later again in a pile at the foot of my desk mentally marked for projects for when things slow down.Spoiler alert: things never slowed down.
Because I’ve made focaccia dozens of times, I know a spot-on recipe when I see one. Many of them, beloved as they are, require some tweaking in your kitchen to get the bubbling and structure you crave. I’ve often relied on my recipe, published during the pandemic in Oprah magazine along with several breads from Gabrielle Hamilton), but this one has a competitive edge that kept calling me—it goes into the pan in pieces, baking into delightfully tempting little sections guests can pull apart at the table without a knife. Genius.
I’m putting it here because spring is full of the kinds of meals that focaccia—especially the casual pull-apart sort— would go beautifully with: Spring lamb feasts or chicken dinners, summer picnics, Mother’s Day brunch, graduation parties or when, like we did last night, you decide to grill every vegetable in the fridge (or your CSA box), and need little more than a panful of focaccia and some olives and a green sauce (a pesto, chimichurri, or another does-it-all-green sauce) to go alongside. I highly recommend. The recipe is below.
Finally—a big thanks to all of you who joined my first monthly LIVE cooking class last Sunday. It was a smash (do people still say that?), loads of fun and delicious and I can’t wait to do it again next month. Stay tuned for those details. You can still opt-in and watch the recorded class anytime at your leisure.
xx
Sarah
This letter wouldn’t be possible without YOU! Thank you for being here and enormous thanks to all who choose to support my work with a paid subscription.
PULL-APART FOCACCIA
Reprinted with permission By Susan Spungen from Veg Forward
This has got to be the easiest homemade bread ever. If you’ve never made a yeasted bread before, I guarantee you’ll be proud of yourself. As with any yeast dough, you have a lot of flexibility with timing here. I find it very easy to mix up the dough a day or two before I want to bake it, and just forget about it in the fridge, but if you are not a planner, and want to speed things up, you can mix up the dough on the same day you want to bake, achieving the first rise in a few hours. The exact time it takes to double will depend on the ambient temperature in the room, so leave extra time, and keep a close eye on it. You also have the option of transferring the dough to the pan in one piece, instead of dividing the dough for the pull-apart version, which adds a sense of fun to the traditional Italian flatbread.
1 ½ teaspoons/ 5 g instant dry yeast
2 ½ cups/ 562 g lukewarm water
5 cups/640 grams all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons/12 grams kosher salt
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
⅓ fluffy cup/20g grated Parmesan cheese
Fresh rosemary
Flaky salt, for sprinkling
Pour the water into a medium bowl. Sprinkle the yeast over top and stir to combine and let sit for about 5 minutes.
Whisk together the flour and salt in a large bowl. Using a rubber spatula, stir the flour and the kosher salt into the yeast and water mixture, combining thoroughly. Drizzle about a tablespoon of oil around the edges of the bowl, pick up the mass of dough so you can oil underneath, and turn it over a few times to coat. Drizzle another tablespoon of oil on top, seal tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 12 hours and as many as 48. If you want to bake it the same day, let the dough rise on the counter for 1 ½ to 2 hours, or until doubled in size.
Dampen your hands, and make 4 folds, scooping from underneath and turning the dough over onto itself, turning the bowl a quarter turn each time. This will simultaneously deflate the dough and create some structure.
Pour 2 tablespoons of oil in a 9 by 13-inch metal baking pan and tilt the pan to spread it out evenly. Scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto the countertop. Oil your hands lightly using the oil on the surface of the dough, and using a bench scraper, divide the dough into 4 pieces. Then cut each quarter into 5 or 6 pieces. It’s not important that they are all the same size. Shape each piece of dough into a tight ball and place in the pan, arranging them randomly with roughly equal amounts of space around the balls. Any gaps will close up as the dough rises.
Cover with an oiled piece of plastic wrap and let rise in a not-too-cold place, until doubled, about 1½ to 2 ½ hours. It could take longer if the room is very cold. If you’re working with dough that hasn’t been refrigerated, this rise will take 1 to 1 ½ hours.
When ready to bake, heat the oven to 450℉ with an oven rack in the center. If you have a baking stone, place it on the rack. Drizzle the dough with the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil and lightly oil your fingers with it. Dimple the entire surface of the dough deeply, all the way down to the bottom of the pan, as if you were playing a concerto. Sprinkle with the cheese, rosemary, and flaky salt and bake for 25 to 30 minutes until deep golden brown on top. As soon as the pan is cool enough to handle, use a spatula to slide out onto a cooling rack so the bottom doesn’t get soggy.
SERVES 8 to 10
SIX SPRING BOOKS (OUT NOW!)
Le Sud: Recipes from Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur by
: Equal parts cookbook and stunning travellogue, this photo-rich book harkens memories of my early twenties on the Cote d’Azur, where I was one a private chef in St. Tropez. Peppler captures all the sterling qualities and classic recipes of the south (of France, naturally), like Pissaladiere, Marinated Chevre, Poulet aL’Ail, and Vegetable Tian, just to name a few, in her signature voice that’s made her beloved far beyond the world of food and drink. You’ll be hearing more about this one from me.Pizza Night: Deliciously Doable Recipes for Pizza and Salad by
. There’s a lot one could say about Ali Stafford —she’s warm, delightful, lovely—a mother and expert bread baker; but here’s what makes her book such a gem: Ali does her homework, and thensome. There’s no one I trust more when it comes to making restaurant-level doughs in a home kitchen. We’ll be working our way through this all summer.Health Nut: A Feel-Good Food Cookbook by Jess Damuck. A sequel (ish) to her knock-out-book Salad Freak, Jess’s new book is creative and wholesome in equal measure. Recipes like Charred Cabbage with Mushroom Butter, Peach and Burrata Caprese with Hot Honey and in the dessert category— Date-Sweetened Carrot Cake, Oat Bars with Rhubarb Ginger Jam will win raves.
The Farm Table, by Julius Roberts. Besides his obvious good looks and charm (check out his daily instagram reels), Julius’ has restaurant chef chops with farmboy appeal. He loves his baby goats and a simmering pot of beans with equal measure and you’ll taste it. More to come on this gem.
Around Our Table: Wholesome Recipes to Feed your Family and Friends, by Sara Forte. It’s hard to top this collection of highly doable, everyday meals that resonate as exactly what I want to cook/eat most days. Think: Broccoli, Carmalized Onion and White Cheddar Quiche, Harvest Breakfast Bake, Hough’s Guacamole, Peach and Lentil Salad with Black Pepper Vinaigrette, Chicken Parmesan Meatballs, Cauliflower Al Pastor, Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble Bars and One Bowl Carrot Cake. If I had to pick one book to cook through this year, this would be it.
Feel Good Foodie by Yumna Jawad: Yumna’s online presense is impressive (to the tune of 4.6 million followers) but it’s her true presense in life that impresses me. She’s a super engaged mom of two that I had the pleasure to spend a weekend with early on in social media days. Her family-friendly recipes like Overnight Oats are great, but it’s her reipes for Middle Eastern dishes like Chicken Shawarma, Tahini Kafta, and Couscous-Almond Pilaf with Dates—and other favorites from her mom’s Lebanese kitchen, that draw me in.
Focaccia recipe photo and styling by Susan Spungen.
Looks so delicious and love the pull apart idea.
Can't wait to try this recipe! Just as a side note I picked up your book "feast" and It is so inspiring- lots of ideas and I think your best book!! Nice work, Sarah. Using it to menu plan vegetarian meals for family this summer.