Name: Beetroot Focaccia
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 220 min
Ingredients: 500 g strong white bread flour; 10 g salt; 10 g instant yeast; 100 ml olive oil ( for the dough); 350 ml water warm; 3 beetroot (precooked, cut into slices); 0.5 red onion (thinly sliced); 2 sprigs rosemary; 1 tsp flaky sea salt; olive oil (for your hands)

This Beetroot Focaccia is sweet, salty and earthy. A delicious way of using the humble root vegetable, beetroot. Get the recipe below.

Beetroot recipes

I love beetroot. It's got a wonderful sweet and earthy flavour which I think is delicious. But, I think a lot of people know what to do with it, regardless of whether it comes raw or cooked.

Today I'm sharing my recipe for Beetroot Focaccia. It's my classic focaccia recipe topped with slices of cooked beetroot, thinly sliced red onion, rosemary and lots of flaky sea salt. Once it's out of the oven I drizzle over plenty of balsamic glaze to finish it off.

Here are some other beetroot recipe you might like to browse:

All of my recipes are savoury but I know some people who do clever things like make chocolate cake out of beetroot!

How to make beetroot focaccia

There are two steps to any focaccia recipe: (1) the dough and (2) the toppings.

Focaccia dough

I love making focaccia dough because it's so bubbly and bouncy. It's a great example of a bread dough coming alive. When it's all bouncy and jiggly it makes me so happy.

To make the dough you add bread flour, olive oil, water, yeast and salt to a bowl. It gets mixed together and then kneaded until smooth and bouncy.

Two things to note at this stage are (1) don't let your yeast and salt touch or the yeast will die and (2) using a mixer to knead is a GREAT idea. I like to use a mixer to do the kneading because this is a wet, sticky dough. It will get ALL over your hands if you attempt to do it yourself and it will constantly be sticking to your work surface. Make your life easier and use dough hooks in a mixer.

Once it's well mixed you leave it to prove. This will take roughly 2 hours and in that time it will double in size. You'll see that its already full of bubbles and jiggly.

Turn it out onto a baking sheet that has had semolina sprinkled over it (to avoid the dough sticking). Stretch the dough out into a rectangle and push dimples into the surface. Cover with a tea towel and leave to rise again for about 30 minutes. When you come back it will be bouncy and you may need to push the dimples back into the dough.

Focaccia toppings

Once the second prove has happened its time to add your toppings.

For this beetroot focaccia I've used precooked beetroot from a packet. (Though you could boil or roast your own). I cut the beetroot into slice and then dot over the top of the dough. Next I do the same with thinly sliced red onion, rosemary leaves and lots of flaky sea salt.

The focaccia will bake in a hot oven for 25 minutes.

To finish the bread, drizzle over some balsamic glaze and then eat!

I think that beetroot, red onion, rosemary and balsamic glaze is a really delicious flavour combination. I particularly like the contrast between sweet and salty. You might say I've been quite conservative with the amount of toppings I've added so do feel free to add more if you wish.

The recipe