What's 4 Dinner, by Marie: Focaccia Bread

3 cups flour
1 Tablespoon yeast
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1.25 cup hot tap water

Optional toppings:
S&P
Parmesan
garlic
rosemary
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Preheat oven to 400*

In a large mixing bowl, I mix together flour, yeast and oil. Add hot water all at once and mix with a fork. Once it seems you've picked up as much of the flour as you can, use your hands to pull the ball of dough together and it will start to feel a bit sticky and will pick up any remaining flour from the bowl. Don't overwork the dough. This is not a kneading kind of bread. This is super fast, maybe ten minutes start to finish.

Once the dough is mixed, plop onto oiled baking stone or pizza pan. My pizza stone is 10 X 13 inches.
Don't roll or stretch dough. Just push it into shape. Once it's covering the stone, pour a bit of olive oil onto it, brush it or spread it with your hand. To that add any of the optional ingredients your family enjoys. This time, I added sea salt, course ground pepper, rosemary and grated Parmesan.

For those who are thinking this looks a lot like pizza, it sure does. Feel free to use this simple recipe for your pizza crust. :)

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, or until the cheese starts to brown. Remember, this is not mozzarella cheese. It will not bubble up and brown that deeply. Don't over cook for Focaccia or it'll be ultra crispy.

There's not much to this. Flour, yeast, oil and water...

Preheat the oven.

Flour and yeast.

And a little olive oil.

While I'm getting the flour out, the hot water is running to get as hot as it can. Get the water and pour it right into the flour, all at once.

Remember, water goes in all at once, before you start mixing.

Get your fork moving. This won't take but a minute.

The pizza stone needs to be oiled. If you haven't already done this, do it before you pull the dough out of the bowl.

If you'd like to keep your hands clean, use a pastry brush. Don't worry, you'll have other opportunities to get hands into the dough.

This is the best I could do with the fork. Now it's time to get the dough out with your hand.

See all the four on the bottom of the bowl? It needs to get picked up by the ball of dough.

30 seconds later it's all up. Nothing more than pushing the dough into the bowl as I turned it around and it picks it all up as it gets a bit sticky.

Put the ball of dough onto the oiled stone, flattening it down.

Continue to flattened it out, pushing it towards the edges of the stone as you work it.

All the way to the edges. Since this dough has not had a chance to rise, it will not shrink back from the edges once you stop pushing on it. So, don't go over the edges. You don't want it to burn.

Olive oil on top. 2-3 tablespoons should be plenty. Add a little at a time so you don't drown your dough.

Spread it around nicely, but not over the edges. If it drips onto the oven floor it's smoke and creates a mess.

A nice light coating. Not too much. You just want to hold on your toppings, not drip off your elbows as you eat it.

Sea Salt. Not too much, we aren't making pretzels...

Course ground black pepper

I like rosemary on my focaccia. But you don't want your family choking down pine needles on their bread. I give mine a quick twist with mortar and pestle.