Olive Focaccia Bread

          Focaccia Bread has been on my to-bake list for a long time, finally I made it when a can of black olives that I had was getting close to the expiry date. It's actually a very simple recipe, even beginners can do it, if you have good quality yeast and follow the steps carefully, the bread will turn out really good. There are different varieties of Focaccia, depending upon the added ingredients, I have added some black olives to make Olive Focaccia Bread, we can add sun dried tomatoes, different herbs or even without of any of these, just simple plain Focaccia Bread. The bread has a crispy crust and a soft interior and is very flavorful from the olive oil and other herbs added to it..

Need To Have

• All Purpose Flour/Maida - 11/4 cup
• Whole Wheat Flour/Atta - 11/4 cup
• Instant Yeast - 1 teaspoon
• Sugar - 1 teaspoon
• Roughly Chopped Olives - 3/4 cup
• Fresh Rosemary - 2 teaspoons, chopped
• Salt - 1/2 teaspoon
• Olive Oil - 2 tablespoons

Original Recipe here

Method

          Add the yeast and sugar to 2 tablespoons of 1/2 cup of hottish water and leave it to bubble up. Now take both the flours, add salt, 1 tablespoon olive oil, yeast, olives and rosemary.

          Add the remaining of the 1/2 cup water and another 3 tablespoons of water and bring everything together to make a soft dough and knead it for 5 to 7 minutes. Cover and leave it for an hour till it doubles up. Punch it down and put it in an 8x8 greased baking pan and leave it to rise for another 25 minutes.

Then dimple the dough all over and drizzle the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil into all the dimples and leave for another 20 minutes. In the meantime preheat the oven to 215 C and bake the bread for 25 to 30 minutes till the top turns golden. Remove, cool it a little, then remove from the pan, cool it completely, slice and serve.

Note
Rosemary and olive oil gives a unique flavor to the bread, if you can't find fresh rosemary, use a teaspoon of the dried one.
Since I used canned olives, there's some salt in it, so if you are using fresh olives, then add a little more salt to the bread or sprinkle some coarse sea salt on the top of the bread and then bake.
I have used equal proportions of plain flour and whole wheat flour, you can use just plain flour too.