Recipes/Anchovy and Thyme Focaccia

Anchovy and Thyme Focaccia

I wish I could tell you I make all my own bread. I always mean to get a sourdough starter going, but I’ve accepted that my favourite bakery makes better loaves than I can in my oven. But this focaccia? This is worth making at home, the only bread I regularly make. The key is the anchovy topping; bread is at its best when generously salted and dipped in olive oil, and this one is from the moment you take it out of the oven. Ella Risbridger and I have spoken often about focaccia over the years, testing again and again, sending photos back and forth, until we nailed our recipes. What really helps is a slow overnight prove (I know – you can avoid this if you want, but it really is better), and a salt brine during the final rise, a tip courtesy of the brilliant Samin Nosrat. The base recipe is from James Morton’s Brilliant Bread; the uneven structure and chewy texture it yields is a dream. Over time, I have played around with adding more and more water – an extra 5ml a batch – until I land

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Babka has its roots in the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community, where enriched dough was spread with jam, cheese, or spices before being rolled up and baked. It is commonly made with chocolate, thought to have been an American addition that originated when Jewish communities began baking it in the States. It was there that I ate my first slice of babka: in New York, on the Lower East Side. It was the platonic ideal — the dough soft, the crust as crisp and sweet as that of a glazed doughnut, rich chocolate ribboned all the way through. This recipe is the result of a happy year spent playing around with a number of famous babka recipes in the hope of creating something that lived up to that first slice. I leaned on the famous Breads Bakery, as well as Russ & Daughters in New York, and on Yotam Ottolenghi too. There is butter in the dough and in the filling, and though it’s a bread that really relies on all its various components for tender perfection, it’s the quantity of butter

Anchovy and Thyme Focaccia

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