Focaccia with Butternut Squash, Garlic, and Sage
Butternut squash and sage in the spring? Alice Waters would throw a fit! But, hear me out: we went to Sailor last week in Fort Greene and April Bloomfield’s food was so incredible — I’m still dreaming about that green toast… and that chicken… and that stuffed radicchio — that I spent much of Saturday studying her two cookbooks, A Girl and Her Pig and A Girl and Her Greens.
Why her focaccia, more than anything else, called to me, I can’t say. But the idea of baking two loaves of focaccia in cake pans with lots of olive oil and topping them with a mixture of butternut squash, sage, and garlic? Then drizzling on more oil, Maldon sea salt, and grated Pecorino? It had me at hello.
Like all good bread doughs, this one starts the night before. You make something called a biga which is a pre-ferment. As in: you mix yeast, warm water, and flour and then let it work its magic for 18 to 24 hours. What happens is it gets all bubbly and complicated and way more interesting than if you just mixed those ingredients right before you baked the bread.
The next day — or afternoon, really — you combine the biga with more bread flour, more yeast, extra-virgin olive oil, and salt. You work that in your KitchenAid mixer until it’s smooth and pulls away from the bowl, then you shape it on a floured surface. Look how pretty.
While that goes into an oiled bowl to double in size, you set about making the topping. Yes: I went with the butternut squash, but you could do something more springy like sugarsnap peas and asparagus, I’m sure. I was just curious to try April’s bold combination of butternut squash, garlic, chilies, and sage. And I was not disappointed!
Eventually, the dough goes into oiled cake pans, you let it rise for 25 minutes, then you add the cooled topping, press it in, and let it rise for another 25 minutes. This focaccia’s not for the impatient, clearly.
But once it goes into a 450 oven? The smells that will start to float through the air will be worth the price of admission. And though they are admittedly autumn smells — squash, sage, etc. — they’re mostly yeasty, bread-y smells. When it comes out of the oven looking all golden and beautiful, you almost want to kiss it instead of eat it.
And though kissing it is certainly a possibility, I highly recommend eating it instead.
This makes two pretty huge loaves, so do what I did and give one a way to an appreciative friend or neighbor. The other one makes a great accompaniment for soup — and I ended up making another recipe from April’s book: her spring soup with asparagus and ramps and green garlic. A gorgeous dinner that happened to be vegetarian and wasn’t even a little bit punishing.
So if you’re a stickler for seasonal cooking, put something else on top of your focaccia; but make this recipe no matter what. Like Sailor, it lives up to the hype.
April Bloomfield’s Focaccia with Butternut Squash, Garlic, and Sage
A phenomenal, autumnal recipe from A Girl and Her Greens.
Ingredients:
For the biga:
Scant 1/2 cup tepid water
Scant 1/16th teaspoon active dry yeast (not instant or rapid-rise)
4 ounces (1 cup minus 1 tablespoon) bread flour
For the dough:
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
17 ounces bread flour (about 3 3/4 cups), plus a little extra as needed
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus a glug for coating the bowl
1 tablespoon kosher salt
For the topping:
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus a healthy drizzle for finishing
1 1/2 pounds butternut squash, peeled, seeded,and cut into 1/2-inch cubes (about 3 1/2 cups)
6 medium garlic cloves, thinly sliced
A pinch or two of red pepper flakes (I used Aleppo pepper)
A small handful of sage leaves, torn if large
1 1/2 teaspoons plus a healthy pinch Maldon sea salt
1/2 ounce aged pecorino, finely grated on a rasp-style grater (I didn’t measure this, I just grated Pecorino on top of the bread to my liking!)
Instructions:
Make the biga:
About 24 hours before you plan to bake the focaccia: combine the tepid water and yeast in a small bowl and stir with a wooden spoon until the yeast has dissolved, 30 seconds or so. Put the bread flour in a medium bowl, pour in the yeast mixture, and stir until the flour is incorporated and the ingredients are well combined.
Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and leave in a warm place until the mixture looks bubbly and has thickened (when you tip the bowl it should just barely creep forward), 18 to 24 hours.
Make the dough:
A few hours before you plan to bake the focaccia, combine the yeast, bread flour, 1 tablespoon of the oil, 1 1/4 cups of water, and all of the biga in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. Mix on low speed until you have a uniform dough (about 1 minute), then increase the speed to medium slowly sprinkle in the salt, and mix, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl if need be, just until the dough is smooth and elastic and it begins to pull away from and slap against the bowl of the mixer, 6 to 8 minutes. If the dough is too moist, it won’t pull away from the bowl, so if need be, gradually add a little more flour. If the dough is too dry, it won’t be smooth, so if need be, gradually add a little more water.
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and use your hands to make sure the ball of dough is nice and round.
Add a glug of olive oil to a bowl large enough to hold at least twice the amount of dough, then wipe the bowl with a paper towel to coat it with a thin layer of the oil. Add the dough, cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap, and put it in a warm place until it has doubled in size, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
Make the topping:
Heat the oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat until it smokes lightly. Add the squash (it’s okay if it’s not in one layer) and cook, stirring and tossing occasionally, just until the edges begin to brown, 5 to 7 minutes. The squash cubes will still be slightly crunchy in the middle.
Push the squash to one side of the skillet. Add the garlic to the empty side and sprinkle the chilies over the squash. Cook the garlic, stirring until it’s golden brown at the edges, about 1 minute, then mix everything together. Cook for a minute more, add the sage and 1 1/2 teaspoons of Maldon salt, and remove the pan from the heat. Stir well and let the mixture cool.
Top and bake the foaccia:
Pour 1/4 cup of the oil into two 8-inch round cake pans and tilt them so the oil covers the surfaces.
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and cut it in half. (It should all weigh 2 pounds, so each half should be 1 pound each, if you’re using a scale. Otherwise, try to make it as even as possible.) Add a half to each cake pan and use your fingers to gently pull the edges of the dough toward the sides of each pan. Cover the pans tightly with plastic wrap and put them in a warm place until the dough relaxes and has puffed up a little, about 25 minutes.
Spread the cooled topping evenly onto the dough, leaving about a 1/2-inch border. Press down gently so the topping sinks in slightly, and gently push the edges so they more or less reach the sides of the cake pan. Cover with plastic wrap again and let it puff up a little more, 15 to 30 minutes.
Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 450 F. Drizzle on a little more olive oil (about 1 tablespoon), put the focaccia on the center rack and bake, rotating the pans once, until the crust and undersides are light golden brown, about 25 minutes.
After removing from the oven, sprinkle them with a healthy pinch of Maldon salt, add a healthy drizzle of olive oil (2 to 3 tablespoons) to the topping and crust, and sprinkle on the pecorino.
Transfer the pans to a rack to cool slightly, then slice however you wish and eat the focaccia warm or at room temperature.
