Big lin­er notes on this one, but I promise, the instruc­tions are what makes this easy. This is great for overnight, but it’s also a deli­cious one you can start at 10am, and bake before 3pm, and be proud of it.  I hon­est­ly can­not get my life togeth­er enough to think about bread a day in advance, but if you can, the bread comes out even bet­ter. Spe­cial shout out to Ulan for proof-read­ing this baby.

Pic­tured is a fonti­na, carmelized onions, and sliced pota­toes with rose­mary. Gone in 60 sec­onds.

The ris­ing times are based upon a warm home, so your times may vary a bit.  I use my oven as a prov­ing box (turn on the oven for a cou­ple min­utes then turn off so it’s like a hot day in there).

The dough has 5 basic ingre­di­ents and we use the “fork knead­ing” method, which is real­ly cool.  The very short ver­sion of the instruc­tions is this:  (1) mix dry ingre­di­ents with water until sat­u­rat­ed; (2) trans­fer to oiled bowl after 1 hour (with fork knead­ing every 15 min­utes); (3) let rise twice for one hour each; (4) trans­fer to 9X13 oiled pan and let rise for 1 hour; (5) dim­ple, driz­zle with olive oil, dec­o­rate and bake at 425 for 30 min­utes. 

Here are complete instructions:

1. 10:00 am.  Into a stand mix­ing bowl, add the fol­low­ing ingre­di­ents.  If you don’t have a mix­er with a dough hook, a reg­u­lar large bowl will do.
   4 cups flour / 515 grams –Bread flour is great for this, but A/P will do very well
   2 tsp fine sea salt
   2 tea­spoons instant yeast
2. Add 2 cups very warm water and mix with dough hook until ful­ly mixed and there are no dry bits.  If you are mix­ing by hand, use a rub­ber spat­u­la.  Regard­less of your method, you will have a pan­cake batter‑y dough.  It’s 89% hydra­tion, so it’s not going to be firm and will not look pret­ty.
   
3. 10:30am Cov­er the bowl with plas­tic wrap or a plas­tic store bag, or (if you’re not an eco-ter­ror­ist) a damp kitchen tow­el (with a rub­ber band around it), and let sit for 15 min­utes.
   
   [If you plan to bake the bread the next day, place dough in a very well greased plas­tic con­tain­er with a lid and refrig­er­ate.  I use olive oil – and lots of it – and I also grease the top of the dough.  Let sit for 12–48 hours, then skip to step 7].
   
4. Let dough sit out in a warm room and use the fork knead­ing method to turn the dough on itself, every 15 min­utes, for 1 hour. This will make a total of 4 kneads with the fork. Fork knead­ing:  using two fork, go around the bowl,  lift­ing the out­side edge of the dough and guide the dough to the cen­ter.  Do this eight times (takes about 1 minute).
   
5. When you’ve fin­ished the knead­ing the 4th time, you should see that the dough has lots of yeast stri­a­tions.
   
6. 11:30am.  Grease a clean bowl with olive oil or neu­tral oil.  Scrape your dough into it, rub oil on the top of the dough, and cov­er.  Let rise until dou­ble in size. About an hour.
   
7. 12:30 pm.  Deflate the dough, and then use the fork knead­ing method, and let rise again in the bowl, about an hour.  If your dough is com­ing out of the refrig­er­a­tor, it will prob­a­bly take 2–3 hours for the same rise.
   
8. 1:30 pm.  Lib­er­al­ly oil (and I mean lib­er­al­ly) a 9 x 13 pan with olive oil.  Trans­fer the risen dough to the pan and, stretch it so that it attempts to fill the bot­tom of the pan (it won’t).  Cov­er pan and let rise one hour.  Even­tu­al­ly, the dough will relax and make it to the cor­ners (or you can push it there).  In the mean­time, prep your top­pings, if any.
   
9. 2:30pm Once the dough has risen, and cov­ers the pan, you’re ready to dim­ple, dec­o­rate, and bake.  Pre­heat the over to 425.  Grease your fin­gers and with the tips of your fin­gers, dim­ple the dough (like you are play­ing piano).  Driz­zle dough with 4 table­spoons of olive oil, press in your ingre­di­ents (or just sprin­kle with sea salt), and bake for about 25–30 min­utes, or until gold­en.  Serve imme­di­ate­ly, or let cool, uncov­ered, then wrap in paper.

Notes:

• If you are going to use cheese along with oth­er ingre­di­ents, put the cheese on the dough as the first lay­er, rather than the last.
• This makes a thick, sand­wich style focac­cia.  If you want thin­ner, use a cook­ie sheet.
• The more oil on the bot­tom, the crispi­er it will be, but don’t go crazy.  If you don’t want to use lots of oil, use parch­ment paper on the bot­tom.
• You can put almost any­thing on focac­cia, but watery veg­eta­bles make for sog­gy tops and burnt veg­gies.  Con­sid­er roma toma­toes (less water), and dry­ing out things like egg­plant and pota­toes, before top­ping them on your dough.
• We tried this at high alti­tude, and it worked with the fol­low­ing changes:  addi­tion­al ½ cup water; slight­ly short­er rise times, and greased parch­ment paper on the bot­tom.
• Note that I pre­fer cooked veg­eta­bles, but if you like raw, use raw.
• Some of my favorite top­pings
  • Fonti­na, caramelized onions, pota­to, rose­mary
  • Rose­mary and salt
  • Shal­lots and moz­zarel­la
  • Piz­za style:  moz­zarel­la, toma­to sauce (or toma­toes), and ricot­ta
    
  • Sauteed mush­rooms and thyme (then dot with gor­gonzo­la when it comes out of the oven.
    
  • Parme­san and herbs.