Broccoli, Pork & Fennel Sausage Focaccia with Garlic Chilli
I mean this is pretty much a pizza but it’s thick still so we’ll call it a focaccia. It uses my standard no knead focaccia recipe that’s topped with broccoli, pork and fennel sausage, mozzarella and garlic chilli oil. It’s fucking delicious is what it is! Buy good quality pork and fennel sausages for this. I used L’Authentique ones for this but it’s a pretty standard flavour that you could get from your local butcher.
Ingredients
Makes a 25x20cm focaccia
Focaccia
1 ½ cups warm water
1 tsp dried yeast
3 Tbsp olive oil
3 cups flour
2 tsp salt
Top It
3 medium size pork & fennel sausages, torn
3 Tbsp picked rosemary leaves
3 broccolini stalks, roughly chopped
200g buffalo mozzarella, roughly torn
2-3 small chillis, minced
½ clove garlic
2 Tbsp olive oil
Prep It
Place warm water in a large bowl and sprinkle in yeast. Set aside for about 10 minutes to let the yeast do its thing. It should go frothy. Sometimes it doesn’t, just check the use by date before you use it and you should be fine.
Add olive oil, flour and salt and mix with a spoon, until it forms a kind of shaggy dough. Set aside covered with a tea towel for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes we need to perform the first set of stretch and folds. Dampen your hands with water and reach underneath one side of the dough. Lift the dough up stretching it up and fold it over top of the dough in the bowl. Give the bowl a quarter turn and stretch and fold it again. Repeat this process, until you make it all the way round the bowl (4 times).
Cover the dough again and leave it to rest for 1 hour before stretching and folding the dough again. Let it sit for an hour, stretch and fold once more and then she’s ready to go into the fridge.
Drizzle a good amount of olive oil over and around the dough. Cover and pop it in the fridge overnight. Alternatively for a quickie focaccia, allow it to prove for 2 hours before continuing on.
Finish It
Preheat oven to 220°C (Fan Bake)
Line a 20x25cm with baking paper and add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. I use baking paper to start because this dough is quite wet. It gets very sticky and I have butchered many a focaccia trying to scrape it out of the baking dish. We remove the paper later to crisp the bottom so all good.
Get your dough out of the fridge and perform 1 last set of stretch and folds. Place the dough, seam side down on your baking tray and allow to rest for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes press the dough out to the edges of the tray. If it springs back leave it to rest for a little longer. Rest for a further 30 minutes.
While focaccia proves roughly chop broccoli and tear mozzarella into small pieces.
Finely chop chilli and mince garlic. Combine both with olive oil and a pinch of salt in a small bowl for serving.
Using kitchen scissors cut the sausages open and remove the filling. Break it into small chunks.
Bake It
When your focaccia is proved oil your hands and press down into the dough to dimple it. Scatter over the sausage and press it lightly into the dough. Sprinkle over rosemary.
Bake in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes remove from oven and carefully slide the paper out and away. Sprinkle over broccoli and mozzarella and return to the oven but on the bottom shelf now and bake for a further 5 minutes, until cheese is melted, broccoli is tender and bread is golden.
Cut into pieces and drizzle over garlic chilli.