Topping focaccia or flatbread with artichoke at Night Work Bread.
My excellent local bakery, Night Work Bread, offers a rotating menu of imaginative focaccia aka flatbread topping ideas. The base is a long fermented sourdough juiced up with a bit of yeast so it is light and fluffy but with a bit of a tang. My favorite topping is artichoke hearts, quartered and covering most of the surface; they’ve also featured tomato and thin sliced yellow summer squash among other things.
We placed tomato slices and artichokes on top before final rise; they stayed on top rather than becoming embedded.
I set out to recreate this focaccia topping using our Fast Focaccia recipe while also solving a problem. Night Works applies their flatbread topping halfway through the cooking process (that’s my theory anyway) which means the bread in exposed areas is pasty (see the center area in above photo) and some of the topping falls off before you can get it in your mouth. I tried putting the topping on before the second rise, with the dough in the baking pan, but the ingredients just sit on top as the bread rises.
We used the “dimpling” method to press thin tomato slices into the dough before baking. Better! Thin sliced tomato, caramelized onion and garlic.
For the next bake I added topping after the final rise, just before the focaccia dough goes in the oven, and pressed it down into the dough with the “dimpling” action typically used to poke holes in focaccia dough before baking. This turns out to be the solution. The topping is embedded in the flatbread so it doesn’t fall off, and as a bonus the ingredients add flavor to the surrounding dough instead of just sitting on top.
I am happy that Trader Joe’s frozen Artichoke Hearts are back in stock because they are not overly moist so can easily crisp up during the bake. Moist ingredients, like the canned artichokes I used in a pinch when the Trader Joe product was out of stock, do not crisp up and can make the dough soggy. Going to make a batch tonight, possibly combined with some roasted fennel and a bit of red onion.
Today’s food porn: cinnamon sugar focaccia from Night Work Bread.
