Easy Brown Butter Sage Focaccia

Before there was pizza, there was focaccia. An easy-to-make yeast leavened bread, cooked over a hearth, focaccia was an everyday staple in classical Italy (and Greece). From these humble origins emerged what we all know as pizza! Even today, bakers love topping focaccia with flavorful ingredients to produce unique and delicious combinations, like our easy brown butter sage focaccia.

Focaccia is not a difficult bread to make, and it’s base recipe only requires a few ingredients: flour, yeast, salt, sugar, and water. Because the base dough is so plain, it lends itself to customization. And in that category, the sky is the limit! Today, we’ll show step-by-step how to make our focaccia. Let’s dive right in.

Step 1: Activate the yeast

When stored, yeast can sometimes lose its ability to produce gases. To check if yeast is still good – and to save yourself from using up ingredients, only to throw the whole dough away when the yeast doesn’t rise – activate the yeast first.

To do this, add half the water, the sugar, and the yeast to a bowl. The water should be about 110 degrees Fahrenheit, which in our kitchen, is about as hot as the water will get. To this water, stir in sugar and yeast. You may be wondering, if we’re activating the yeast, why add the sugar now? Wouldn’t that go to waste if the yeast is no good? Good question! Since yeast is a living thing, it requires energy to perform its function in bread. Yeast consumes the sugar and produces gas, which is eventually visible. Like so:

If your yeast does not foam up like this in 10 minutes or so, start over. Either the yeast isn’t functional or the water is the wrong temperature! Too cold, and yeast doesn’t have the energy to activate. Too hot, and the yeast is killed. The ideal range for activating yeast is 100-120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Step 2: Combine the dry ingredients

In a separate bowl, combine the salt and flour. Pre-mixing the dry ingredients means less mixing when the water is added. Once flour becomes moistened, gluten starts to form. This is good, as it is the “skeleton” that gives bread its shape. However, too much gluten can create a dense, tough bread. The more a dough is mixed, the more gluten forms. Therefore, pre-mixing dry ingredients helps prevent over-mixing of wet dough, which makes for a fluffier bread! Easy enough!

For this specific recipe, we also used a teaspoon of garlic and a teaspoon of rubbed sage. This helps the flavors spread throughout the entire dough, not just on the surface!

Step 3: Bring it all together

Pour the water and activated yeast into the dry mixture and stir until just combined. I really love using a Danish dough whisk for this, but you can use whatever you please! A spatula, a spoon, your hands, or even a hand or stand mixer! This is what it should look like at this stage:

This is our base recipe for focaccia. From here, focaccia can go many different ways!

Step 4: Spread dough in a springform pan

Before putting the dough in the springform pan, make sure to grease the springform pan. We use olive oil, but you can get creative here, too, if you like! The dough doesn’t necessarily have to reach all the way to the edges of the pan, as it will rise and spread a bit overnight.

Focaccia is typically stored covered in olive oil to prevent the top from drying out while the dough is rising. As mentioned in the introduction, focaccia is also typically topped with solid ingredients like herbs, peppers, or garlic! For this recipe, we used garlic and sage. We made a bit of a wheel-type design with the sage, as well as adding a wheat-type design in the middle to celebrate fall! You can choose to use your toppings however you like!

Step 5: Store overnight

Apply a thin layer of olive oil to the surface of the dough. When choosing an olive oil, quality matters. If you’re wondering how to choose a bottle, see our olive oil guide.

Press plastic wrap to the surface of the dough and store in the refrigerator overnight. This time allows for the dough to rise some more, as well as developing some amazing flavor! It is possible to get away with only rising for a couple of hours, but the flavor will not be as good. But in a pinch, do what you need to do! This is what the dough will look like after resting overnight:

It has risen a bit and gotten very soft. Traditionally, focaccia is poked with the fingers throughout to prevent large bubbles from forming during the baking process. We did not do so with this bread, as the design on top would’ve been harmed. If you feel your bread will support the extra step, go right ahead and poke dents in your dough! Time to bake!

Step 6: Bake your easy brown butter sage focaccia

In an oven that has been preheated to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, bake the dough for 30 minutes. There are a few things to consider during this step:

• The size of the pan you are using. If you are using a wider pan and your dough is thinner, you may only need to bake for 20-25 minutes.
• If you have poked your dough. An alternative to preventative measures against large bubbles, there is also the option to watch the dough for large bubbles and pop them during the baking process. This is common when making deep-dish pizza. Just be sure not to burn yourself!
• Your specific oven. If your oven tends to be hotter or cooler than the temperature at which it is set, factor that into your baking time! If there are known hot spots or cold spots, make sure to turn your pan!

Here is what the dough looks like fresh out of the oven:

Gorgeous. And the smell? To die for! But we’re not quite finished yet. Cover the loaf with a tea towel and move onto the next step.

Step 7: Brown the butter

To a small skillet, add a stick of butter. Yes, a whole stick of butter. It’s worth the flavor! The first stage is the butter melting, and we all know how that looks. You’ll be left with something that looks like this:

That white foamy stuff on top is the milk solids. That is what is going to give the brown color and nutty flavor! After about a minute or so, the milk solids will start to foam. Eventually, it will become so foamy, the oil underneath will not be visible. Immediately after this, the foam will start to subside and the mixture will smell nutty. That means it’s done, even if you can’t see the brown oil! Keep stirring, and it will quickly start to color the foam. It will look like this:

See that golden brown? That’s the browned milk solids. That’s the flavor!

Step 8: Pour the browned butter over the bread

This is the last thing standing between you and freshly baked focaccia! Pour your browned butter over your bread. We like to (using oven mitts) pick up the pan and swirl it around so that all of the loaf gets an opportunity to absorb some of that flavor! Then, we use a spatula to scrape out the browned milk solids onto the loaf. They come out clumpy and not at all pretty. So, we use a basting brush to spread the browned milk solids over the top of the loaf evenly. The finished product looks like this:

A Valentine’s Day version that we did:

YUM! Focaccia is traditionally ripped apart with the hands, but we cut a slice so that you can see the crumb:

Enjoy this bread with our Brazilian black bean soup or unique pumpkin soup with gnocchi. Or, you can use it as the base of a pizza! Or you could have formed it into buns and used it as sandwich bread! The options with this recipe are endless!

Buon appetito!

A Dish to Share helps curious home cooks feel proud of what they made, excited about what’s next, and increasingly knowledgeable about food and culture, one global recipe at a time.