Full Moon(struck) Sourdough Breakfast Focaccia
They say bread is life. And I bake bread, bread, bread. And I sweat and shovel this stinkin' dough in and out of this hot hole in the wall, and I should be so happy! Huh, sweetie? - Ronny Cammareri
Bread is life. And the beautiful thing about bread is that it comes in many different forms: leavened, unleavened, braided, rolled, long, round...tell me when to stop.
Focaccia, an Italian bread, is one of those breads that is fully satisfying while offering a lot of room for customization. Inspired by Moonstruck (1987), I baked this Full Moon(struck) Sourdough Breakfast Focaccia topped with garlic, olives, bacon, and eggs. This Sourdough Breakfast Focaccia is for those who love breakfast, breakfast for dinner, and everything in between.
Moonstruck is a romantic comedy about Loretta Castorini, a widowed bookkeeper from Brooklyn, New York, who falls in love with her fiancé's estranged brother, Ronny Cammareri (Nicolas Cage). In an early scene in Moonstruck, Loretta Castorini (Cher) walks sleepily into her parent's kitchen to her mom (Olympia Dukakis) making her breakfast: egg-in-a-hole.
As a breakfast lover, this simple breakfast meal inspired a breakfast that takes a bit more time but requires few simple but good ingredients: olive oil, flour, water.
I made this focaccia in a cake pan, which gives the bread more height because the pan is smaller than a sheet tray. The height on this bread is everything! It looked more like cake when it came out of the oven but had the chew of a soft bread.
I used the sourdough starter that I made a couple of weeks ago, which adds a delicious flavor (along with the thyme that I added to the dough). Because of the sourdough starter (versus active dry yeast), the dough had a lot more rising and waiting to do. I added thyme to my dough to give it an extra level of flavor. I made the dough on a Saturday, let it rest overnight, and then baked it fresh on Sunday morning.
When it's time to bake the bread, you'll simply dimple the bread, add the cooked bacon and raw minced garlic and cook it for about 20 minutes. At this time, you'll remove it from the oven, crack the eggs on top, add on any extra goodies you want (olives, sun-dried tomatoes, etc.) and bake it again for 8-10 more minutes.
This Breakfast Focaccia is gorgeously rustic, leaves room for error, and is a delicious change of pace for breakfast, and though it's more intensive than egg-in-holes, the results are worth it.
Full Moon(struck) Sourdough Breakfast Focaccia
Serves: 8-10 | Cooking Time: 60-90 minutes
Ingredients
165 grams active starter (at peak)
300 grams water (room temperature)
20 grams honey
8 grams salt
30 grams olive oil (will use different amounts at two separate times)
2 grams dried thyme
450 white whole wheat flour
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
3-4 bacon strips, cooked (with the oil dabbed off with paper towels)
3 eggs
4-7 olives
(Anything else you want to add on top!)
Method
In a bowl, mix the starter with the water, honey, salt, and 10 grams of olive oil.
Add flour and mix together with a spatula until the flour is hydrated (when you no longer see dry flour). Add this mixture to a stand mixer with the dough hook and mix on low speed for 10 minutes. If you want to knead by hand, knead for 10 minutes until the dough tightens. In both cases, you’ll want to make sure the dough is tight and pulls away from the sides of the bowl.
Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and set it in a warm area (around 75 degrees). I like to put my dough in the oven (off, of course). Let the dough rise for 5-7 hours (mine took about 6.5 hours until it gained height). If your dough looks puffy, you’re on the right track.
If you want to wait until the next day to bake it, cover the dough with plastic and put it in the fridge overnight. The next morning, take the dough out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature. Once the dough is room temperature, scrape it into an olive oil-coated cake pan (See Step 6) and let it rise for two hours, covered with a damp cloth. // If you want to bake the same day, skip this step and continue on to Step 5.
After this first rising, stretch and fold the top, bottom, and sides of the dough on top of itself. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and let it rise for two hours until the dough rises and looks glossy on the surface.
In a cake pan (preferably the ones that you can pop the side off from the bottom), add olive oil until the entire bottom and sides are coated. Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Scrape the dough into the cake pan and stretch the dough out. Add 20 grams of olive oil while you press into the dough with your fingertips to dimple the surface. Make sure your fingers touch the bottom of the pan to get a good dimpling. If you want to add eggs, use two fingers to dimple a well in the areas you want the eggs. (Ultimately, the cake pan will hold the eggs in, but this just creates more texture on the focaccia’s surface to hold the toppings).
Add the garlic and cooked bacon. It’s important the bacon is cooked so the top of your bread doesn’t get greasy.
Put the pan in the oven on the middle rack and bake for 20 minutes (the thickness requires that the bread bakes a tad longer). After 20 minutes, remove the pan from the oven, crack the eggs into the dimpled wells you formed, add the olives (and anything else you want to add) on top and bake for another 10 minutes. The bread should look golden and be firm but bouncy when you poke it.
Let cool (or not – I like hot bread), slice up, poke into those jammy eggs, and enjoy!