Focaccia with potato olives and cheese

A few weekends ago I baked a focaccia covered in crispy cheese, olives and potato.  The inspiration came from a Tik Tok video showing how crunchy the topping sounded but there wasn't much of a recipe so I used my favourite overnight sourdough focaccia that I had made before.  It was excellent.  I attribute this to having a variety of cheeses, potatoes from a visit to the Vic Market and letting it rise longer than usual.

This focaccia was a bit fiddly because it involved a lot of grating cheese and slicing potatoes.  The Tik Tok vid showed the dough being folded so I did this.  I don't usually bother.  But it helped shape the focaccia to be more square and high.

It was a good recipe to use up bits and pieces of leftover cheeses and olives. 

This was how it looked when it came out of the oven.  It smelled amazing.  We would not wait to sink our teeth into it.  The cheesy topping was so delicious but it was mainly the cheese rather than the potato that was really crispy.  Maybe I needed to bake it a bit longer with the potato before loading on the cheese.

I was really pleased with the height after the last focaccia I made was quite flat.  Making sure the sourdough starter was bubbly and bouncy, leaving it to rise longer (for a few hours) and folding the dough all helped.  It was cheering to eat after watching the politics on Insiders on tv, and gave great energy to ride to the city for shopping.  It lasted a 2 or 3 days and was great to take to work for lunch the next day.

More foccacia baking on Green Gourmet Giraffe:
Antipasto focaccia
Black cat focaccia  (v)
No knead focaccia (v)
Parmesan and onion focaccia (with tofu bacon option)
Rhubarb and raspberry focaccia (v) 


Potato, olive and cheese focaccia
Adapted from Green Gourmet Giraffe and inspired by Tik Tok
Makes 2 focaccia

Foccacia:
300g ripe sourdough starter
450g warm water
40g (about 3 tbsp) olive oil
12g (generous 1/2 tbsp) salt
750g white bread flour
extra olive oil, for shaping

Topping:
1 handful of olives
2-3 cups of grated cheese
4 small to medium potatoes
1 stalk of rosemary
extra olive oil, for drizzling
freshly ground pepper and flaked salt 

Mix all focaccia ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. If you have time give it a 15 second knead in the bowl after 30 minutes but this is optional.  Cover well (I used a cover with elasticised edges or you can use clingwrap) and leave overnight or 8-12 hours.

In the morning scrape bread out of bowl onto an oiled surface.  Cut in half and shape into a flat rectangle on a baking tray lined with a generous amount of baking paper.  Lightly oil hands if it is a little sticky.  Spread it out a little too much and then fold in three to give a bit more height. At this point you can bake but I left mine to rise for 2 hours which seemed to help.

When you are ready to bake, preheat oven to 220 C.

Slice potatoes thinly and cover with cold water for 15 minutes.  Meanwhile roughly chop the olives and rosemary.  Grate the cheese if not already grated.  After 15 minutes drain the water from the potatoes and pat them dry.  Drizzle with olive oil, and brush over the potatoes.  

Dimple the dough with by pushing your fingers deep into the dough.  Drizzle with oil, scatter with some cheese and rosemary, and season.  Arrange potatoes on the dough so they are overlapping and no dough is showing.  Lightly scatter some cheese on top.

Bake for 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and scatter olives and then with more cheese to cover the potatoes well.  Return to oven and bake in 10 minute bursts, checking after each 10 minutes until done (took me 30 minutes with the extra cheese, a total of 40 minutes from when it started baking.)  When it is a crispy golden brown, cool on a wire rack.  You can eat it warm or room temperature and it will last about 2 days.

On the stereo:
Album 1700: Peter, Paul and Mary