Chili Oil Sourdough Focaccia
This Chinese fusion sourdough focaccia is wonderfully smoky, savory, and salty and packs some serious heat. If you love spicy food, you will adore this play on focaccia!
Equipment
- kitchen scale
- 10-10.5" cast iron skillet or Baking Dish
- baking sheet or aluminum foil
Ingredients
- 25 g active sourdough starter
- 212 g water room temperature
- 5 g salt
- 250 g bread flour or all purpose flour
- Chinese chili oil like lao gan ma ideally one with coarse chili flakes*
- olive oil optional
- Maldon flakey sea salt
Instructions
- Mix together sourdough, water, salt, and flour until a sticky dough forms. Let the dough rest for 30min to hydrate.
- Stretch and fold the dough. Take the dough from the sides and stretch it up and over the center of the dough. Rotate and repeat, stretching and folding about 6 times. Cover and let the dough rise overnight 8-12hrs.
- Generously coat a baking dish with the oil portion of the chili oil. Turn the mixing bowl upside down and let gravity do its magic and let the dough fall into the dish. Scrape any leftover dough out of the mixing bowl.
- Fold the four sides of the dough over itself (like closing a cardboard box). Flip it so the seam side is down and let rise uncovered 4-6hrs.
- Preheat the oven to 425F.
- Speckle the dough with the solid parts (chilis) of the chili oil. Oil your fingers with olive oil and dimple and stretch the dough to fit the pan. Generously sprinkle with flakey sea salt.
- Place the focaccia on the middle rack and place a baking sheet on the rack directly above it. This will prevent the chilis from burning. Alternatively, you can cover the top with aluminum foil. Just make sure to remove the foil near the end and finish baking the focaccia uncovered so the top gets some color. Bake the focaccia for 15 minutes and then lower the temperature to 375F. Continue to bake for another 10 minutes or until the top of the focaccia is a nice golden brown.
- Let the focaccia cool for 15 minutes in the cast iron skillet before removing it from the skillet and to a cooling rack.
Notes
*Chili oil with finely crushed chili flakes are more likely to burn before the focaccia is done.