For me summer, fresh herbs and focaccia belong together. So I baked a delicious Potato Focaccia for breadbakingday #01 - themed bread with herbs. This dough, made with mashed potatoes creates a thick focaccia with big holes, as I love it. I did foccacia before (here and here), they were delicious, too (at least one ;-)).

As you can see on the pictures, I kept the dough quite sticky, so it was hard to poke the holes in the dough. If you want to have a drier dough, just use less water or make 1 or 2 stretch and folds more, but be aware that it could be you end up with a less airy focaccia.

Potato Focaccia with Sage

Pre-ferment
100 g white flour
50 g lukewarm water
5 g fresh yeast
1 ts sugar

Final dough
400 g white flour
100 g cooked and mashed potatoes
200 g lukewarm water
30 g olive oil
15 g salt
15 g fresh sage chopped

Brush
1 tb olive oil
1 tb water
coarse sea salt

Pre-ferment: Mix well all ingredients. Cover and let rest up to 15 hours at room temperature.

Pre-ferment after 15 hours.

Fresh sage from my garden, chopped.

Final dough: Put flour, water, mashed potatoes, olive oil and sage in the mixer bowl. Mix on low speed 1 (Bosch MUM 8) until the ingredients form a ball. Add pre-ferment and salt and mix 6 minutes on a higher speed 2 (Bosch MUM 8). Dough should be smooth, elastic and a little bit sticky. Put the dough in an bowl, cover with plastic wrap and leave it to rise for 1 hour.

My new Bosch MUM 8 in action!

Final dough after kneading.

Flour lightly your surface, flatten the dough slightly and fold 2 sides of the dough. Repeat it with the opposite sides and but the dough back. Cover loosely, for 3 hours.

Stretch & Fold step-by-step

Oil a baking sheet. Take the risen dough, flatten it out, and spread it on the baking sheet. Cover and let rise another hour.

Preheat oven to 230 C.

Use your fingers to poke holes in the dough. Brush the foccacia with an water/oil emulsion. Sprinkle it with coarse sea salt, and bake it until golden about 20 minutes.

Focaccia before baking.

Focaccia after baking.

Remove it from the oven, cut it into squares before serving.

breadbakingday, bbd, bread with herbs