Focaccia is delicious on its own, but it’s also a fantastic base for sandwiches or to dip in spreads and sauces. If you’ve never made focaccia before, and you have a stand mixer, our focaccia Genovese recipe is a great place to start. It’s a fairly high hydration dough meaning it’s pretty sticky, but it will also produce lots of light and airy bubbles. Marcus Wareing’s bread is a better one to try if you’re mixing things by hand, as it’s easy to handle but will still produce a beautiful loaf of focaccia. Victoria Glass also has a recipe for gluten-free focaccia, so hopefully even coeliacs and enjoy a square of olive oil-rich bread.

There are lots of regional variations to focaccia as well. In Italy focaccia can be sweet and topped with raisins, thin and stuffed with cheese or a coffee-soaked breakfast treat. If you’re interested in trying a regional version, we have a recipe for focaccia di Recco on the site, which is stuffed with cheese, as well as a focaccia Barese, which uses potato in the dough.

Focaccia is one of those foods which is as much fun to make as it is to eat. Dimpling the puffy dough, pouring it out onto a baking tray and then waiting impatiently until it’s light and crisp. It's a great bread to try your hand at, so check out our full collection of focaccia recipes below, for more ideas on how to enjoy this Italian treat.