This Shallot and Green Olive Focaccia Bread has a crispy, flaky crust that you may associate with the best deep dish pizzas. Top that flaky crust with the garlic and onion flavor of shallots and the salty tart flavor of green olives, and you are in complete bread heaven!
Sometimes delicious recipes show up while I’m cleaning out my fridge. For a while now, I’ve had a couple shallots sitting in my counter-top produce bowl. (Okay, not in the fridge, but same difference right?) I bought them for a recipe a few weeks back, and then found out I already had some at home, so they’ve been hanging out and waiting for me to use them up.
Confession time: Although we like to eat lower-carb foods, and I often post gluten-free recipes here, I am not actually gluten-free. I am a huge bread lover. (Gluten-free eaters, this is a gluten-filled recipe. Now might be a good time to avert your eyes…) In fact, if I could get away with it, I’d probably live on bread and cheese for the rest of my life. In college I would occasionally go to Fazzolis and order a dozen breadsticks for dinner. (Freshman 15 anyone?) Those were good times.
So, back to the shallots. Those shallots have been staring me in the face for a while now, and I wanted to use them in a unique way that would really let them shine. So when I saw a photo of some green olive focaccia bread we enjoyed while in Italy a few summers ago, it all clicked! The green olives in the fridge, plus the shallots on the counter needed to become toppings on a loaf of focaccia bread.
Now there’s a dozen different ways to make focaccia, but I already had a dough recipe in mind since I make my Perfect Pizza Dough every Friday. I realized a while back that there really wasn’t too much difference between my pizza dough and focaccia dough, so I decided to put it to the test for this loaf.
Boy am I glad I did!! I only needed about 1/3 of the dough recipe to fill my 10″ skillet, and 1/2 of the recipe for my 12″ skillet, so you can decide if you want to cut down the recipe, just make 2-3 loaves, or make one giant loaf in a jelly roll pan instead of the cast iron.
The best part about this focaccia is the crust. Because it’s baked in a cast iron pan, and that cast iron pan gets a fairly generous coating of olive oil before the dough goes in, it gets this crispy, flaky crust that you may associate with the best deep dish pizzas. Top that with the garlic and onion flavor of the shallots and the salty tart flavor of the green olives on top, and I am in complete bread heaven!
Shallot and Green Olive Focaccia Bread
- Prep Time: 90
- Cook Time: 20
- Total Time: 110
Description
This Shallot and Green Olive Focaccia bread has a crispy, flaky crust that you may associate with the best deep dish pizzas. Top that flaky crust with the garlic and onion flavor of shallots and the salty tart flavor of green olives, and you are in complete bread heaven!
Ingredients
For 10″ skillet
- 1/3 recipe of my Perfect Pizza Dough
- 1/2 shallot, sliced into rings
- 10–15 green olives, sliced
- 1 Tablespoon dried rosemary (2 Tbsp fresh)
- 4 tablespoons Extra Virgin olive oil
For 12″ skillet
- 1/2 recipe of my Perfect Pizza Dough
- 1 shallot, sliced into rings
- 15–20 green olives, sliced
- 1.5 Tablespoons dried rosemary (2 Tbsp fresh)
- 5 tablespoons Extra Virgin olive oil
For 1/2 sheet jelly roll pan
- Full recipe of my Perfect Pizza Dough
- 1 1/2 shallots, sliced into rings
- 30 green olives, sliced
- 2 Tablespoons dried rosemary (4 Tbsp fresh)
- 1/3 cup Extra Virgin olive oil
Instructions
- Prepare pizza dough as directed in the recipe and allow it to rise for about an hour, or until doubled in size. Punch down dough.
- Coat the bottom of the cast iron skillet/jelly roll pan with a thin layer of olive oil.
- Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees. (Make sure your oven is clean first, or food residue may catch fire at this temp. Not that I know from experience or anything…)
- Stretch the dough ball out in the center of the skillet until it’s about an inch thick and allow it to rise a second time until it fills the pan, about 30 minutes. (For the jellyroll pan, you may want to shape it into a rectangle before rising so it rises to the correct shape.) You don’t want to stretch the dough too thin, so it will only fill the skillet about 2/3 way before the second rise.
- While the dough rises, cook down the sliced shallots in a pan on the stove in a bit of olive oil over medium heat until they’ve started to soften, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside to cool. This will prevent them from being too crunchy on top of the bread.
- After the dough has finished rising the second time, use your fingertips to gently dimple the top of the bread, giving it that definitive focaccia texture.
- Brush a thin layer of olive oil across the top of the bread and top with softened shallots and green olives, pressing them into the surface so they won’t pop out while cooking.
- Sprinkle rosemary over the top and add a bit of kosher or sea salt as well to finish the bread.
- Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until the top of the bread is a nice golden brown.
- Slice and serve while hot!
Notes
- Gluten-free: This is unfortunately not gluten-free if you’re using my dough recipe. Try the same process with your favorite homemade or store-bought gf pizza dough!
- Vegetarian/Vegan: This is vegan.
- To store: Allow leftovers to cool and then seal in an airtight bag.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 6
[…] to say that this is not really a traditional muffuletta at all because I used some of my leftover Shallot and Green Olive Focaccia rather than a lighter muffuletta loaf. (I don’t regret that substitution at all by the […]