Garlic Confit Focaccia

Before You Start

The confit keeps for 4 days in the fridge under its oil; garlic held in oil can carry botulism, so freeze what you will not use by then.

Dimple hard, right through to the tin. Timid dimples spring back and you get a flat loaf instead of a pocketed one.

A metal tin, well oiled. Glass and ceramic will not fry the base to the crisp underside that makes focaccia focaccia.

How to Make Garlic Confit Focaccia

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1. Put the garlic cloves, olive oil, rosemary and peppercorns in a small pan over the lowest heat and cook 35 to 40 minutes, until the cloves are soft enough to crush against the side of the pan and pale gold. They must not brown. Cool completely and fish out the rosemary and peppercorns.

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2. Whisk the flour, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Add the water and mix with a wet hand until no dry flour remains — it will be a shaggy, sticky mass.

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3. Cover and leave 30 minutes, then perform four sets of stretch-and-folds 30 minutes apart: wet your hand, lift one side of the dough up and over itself, and rotate the bowl each time.

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4. On the last fold, add 12 of the confit cloves, crushed, and 3 tablespoons of the garlic oil, and fold them through until distributed in streaks.

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5. Cover tightly and refrigerate 12 to 18 hours.

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6. Pour 3 tablespoons of the garlic oil into a 23 x 33 cm tin and spread it across the base and up the sides. Tip the cold dough in, turn it once to coat, and leave at room temperature 2 hours until relaxed and puffy.

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7. Oil your fingers and press straight down through the dough to the base of the tin, all over, to dimple it and spread it into the corners.

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8. Scatter over the remaining whole confit cloves, pressing them into the dimples, then the rosemary leaves and flaky salt, and spoon over 2 more tablespoons of the garlic oil.

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9. Bake at 230°C / 445°F for 22 to 25 minutes, until deep gold and lifting away from the sides.

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10. Slide it out of the tin onto a rack immediately, or the base steams and softens. Eat warm.

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Related guides: Prep, cook and total time · Pan and tin size.

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Why It Works

Raw garlic on top of a 230°C / 445°F bake burns in minutes and turns acrid, which is why most garlic focaccia tastes bitter. Confiting the cloves at a low temperature turns them sweet and spreadable and gives you an oil carrying the same flavour, so both go into the dough instead of onto it. The long cold ferment does the rest: twelve hours in the fridge lets enzymes break starch into sugars, which is where the flavour and the blistered, deeply browned crust come from, and it develops the gluten without kneading.

After You've Cooked It

Best on the day it is baked. Airtight for 2 days after that, refreshed 5 minutes at 200°C / 390°F. Freezes cut into squares for 2 months.

Ingredient Swaps

• An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.

Serving Garlic Confit Focaccia

• A plate of olive oil and aged balsamic
• Burrata and tomatoes
• A cold glass of Vermentino

Questions and Answers

What's in a Serving

Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: an ingredient listed without an amount is not counted, so the figures run low. How the figures are worked out.

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