a story of focaccia

 In the last few years, especially since I'm not skiing or not skiing as much, I've really enjoyed doing more cooking and baking.  I'm an okay cook, I think, although I'm definitely only used to cooking for us and if it's ever for more than two people, I get squirrelly.  I really love baking but since that's more difficult than cooking, particularly when you factor in altitude and vegan, I've had mixed success.  I have a really good chocolate chip cookie recipe and my cupcakes, cakes and scones are usually decent.  

I am not good at bread.  I really want to be good at bread.  I finally found a focaccia recipe that Katie Boue shared on her IG.  She lives in SLC as well and said she makes that focaccia a couple times a week.  To me, this means that she's got the altitude factor dialed in.  So I tried it:

Attempt #1 (3/30/25)

It came out surprisingly well!  It actually rose correctly and had a pretty good texture.  The only thing was that her recipe didn't call for any salt in the dough itself, so the bread was bland unless you got a bunch of yummy herbs on the top.  

I searched for other vegan focaccia recipes and found one that was very similar, with the addition of salt.  So I tried it, but made the mistake of following that recipe for proofing times instead of my SLC-based one.  I think I over-proofed it so while it rose nicely before baking, it collapsed in the oven and was dense and crunchy.  That was okay, we just dunked it in soup.

Attempt #2 (4/6/25)

For my third attempt, I went back to my SLC-based recipe and followed it EXACTLY, with the addition of salt to the flour.  I also used the new recipe's recommendations for vegan-buttering the baking dish and how much olive oil to use (focaccia uses a lot of olive oil).

Attempt #3 (4/19/25)

Side view (please ignore 1990s vintage kitchen

cabinet hardware that we haven't replaced)

It worked!  Not only did it work, it was delicious!  The dough rose enough and didn't deflate; the bread had a good texture and had flavor.  H said that it was one of the best things I've baked (low bar, to be honest haha) and then called it "restaurant-quality!"  I don't know about that but I do know that I was very proud of that focaccia.  And then we proceeded to eat the whole darn thing.