Olive & Lemon Focaccia

you also need to feed yourself next week

The Internet is currently inundated with holiday meal ideas — OK, and Taylor/Travis updates which you’re either living for or dying from — and I’m not here to give you another one (of either). But I am here to remind you that Thanksgiving is but one day and technically, one meal, so although your mind may be on whatever you’re contributing to a holiday table, your body still needs three, non-Thanksgiving meals a day, every day, from now until Thanksgiving and every day after that. Rude! Exhausting!

Sure, the leftovers will keep you afloat for a few days, but those won’t hit your fridge til Thursday night. What are you feeding yourself until then?

May I submit a low-effort, enormous-payoff, delightfully tactile yet mostly hands-off foundation for your breakfasts, lunches, and light/mindless dinners?

It’s a no-knead focaccia with olives and lemon zest. A stunner with Secret Lunch energy in that it can be a meal in itself but it’s also a genius vehicle for other bits and bobs that will give you both a moment’s pleasure and a few hours of energy. Put an egg on it, make a sandwich with it, slather it with cottage cheese or ricotta for a much-needed protein shot, eat it drizzled with more olive oil and flaky salt while standing over the sink while the gravy gravies and the rolls rise. While everyone else is fretting over whether there will be too many pies (there will be), you will be taking care of yourself with this golden, dimpled guardian angel.

I started tinkering with this a few weeks ago when I flew into a righteous rage after seeing an atrociously flat, un-dimpled focaccia recipe from a legacy food publication that will not be named here. About the same time, I had a lunchtime daydream of the olive & lemon ciabatta rolls I used to buy at work and stuff with a little hunk of cheese. (Greatest grocery store lunch under $5, IMO.) Could I replicate those bright, juicy flavors in a focaccia? Or would the olives weigh things down and leave me with the very sad, unremarkable surface I had railed against?

Luckily for us all, the answer is yes, and then no: yes, it works in a focaccia, and no, the olives won’t hold you back, not even the full pound I used in my olive enthusiasm and general refusal to look before leaping.

Outside of the pantry staples this recipe calls for, the only other thing you’ll need is time, as the dough benefits from a slow, lazy rise in a cool place. This time of year I nearly cackle with glee every time I get to use my cold garage to stage some element of my food prep. I feel like a forest witch with a potions shed, barking at my young witch assistants (children) not to disturb my mystical ferments (bread dough) or peer into a cauldron (stock pot of cooling broth) and mind their own business. You won’t need the olives until you haul the jiggling blob of dough back into the kitchen for its shorter, second rise, a handy fact if you need an excuse to send someone to the store in exchange for a bit of peace and quiet.

If you do deign to share this with friends, family, or visitors, and if anyone wants to know, it is vegan.

Do My Kids Eat This?: With the olives? Probably not. Without (and even with the lemon zest left in)? Probably! If you have an olive-loving kid, I bet they’d love this.

A note about yeast: I’m using instant yeast here because it cuts out the fiddly step of proofing the yeast first, a shortcut I always appreciate, but especially this time of the year. If all you have is active dry, that’s fine! Just proof it first in the same amount of lukewarm water with a teeny pinch of sugar to get it going.

A note about olives: I am a buttery Castelvetrano girlie for life and happily dumped a big, 16-ounce jar of them into this dough (after draining them, obv). But if you’re not as big of a fan, or just enjoy restraint in general, you can absolutely get away with less.

Olive & Lemon Focaccia

4 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons kosher salt

2 teaspoons instant yeast

2 cups lukewarm water

Extra-virgin olive oil

8 ounces to 1 pound pitted Castelvetrano olives, drained

Zest of 1 lemon

Flaky salt

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and yeast. Add the water and use a dough whisk or spatula to mix into a rather sticky dough. Drizzle a tablespoon of olive oil over the dough and lightly rub it all over to cover the dough completely. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap or a lid. (The oil and a tight lid mean an airtight and moist environment for the dough to get wild and funky, which means a bubbly, dimpled bread for you.) Place in a cold garage, cellar, or refrigerator for at least 12 hours and up to 3 days.

Drizzle 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a 9x13-inch metal baking pan and use your hands to coat the bottom and sides of the pan with the oil. Set aside.

Lay out a clean kitchen towel on a flat surface and spread the olives out on the towel. Use another towel to dry the olives thoroughly. (They don’t need to be bone-dry, but eliminating as much excess liquid as possible will help keep the dough bouncy.)

Transfer the olives to a cutting board and chop them very roughly — like, leave about 25% of them whole, about 50% of them in untidy halves, and 25% of them in smaller bits. Texture and bites of juicy olive are the name of the game, here. Set aside.

Rub your (clean) hands with a teaspoon or so of olive oil. Plunge one of your hands into the dough (SENSORY RAPTURE) to deflate it a bit, and use your hands to coax the dough out of the bowl and into the oiled baking pan. Add the olives and zest the lemon right on top of the dough. Use your hands to fold the dough up and over the olives to help distribute them throughout and coat the dough in oil. Repeat until the olives seem pretty well-distributed. (If you’re using the full pound here, many olives will perch stubbornly on top of the dough because there are already so many underneath. Don’t worry! They’ll sink down a bit in the second rise.)

Let rise in a warm place until roughly doubled in size, about 3 hours.

Preheat the oven to 425F.

Drizzle the risen dough with another tablespoon or so of olive oil. Oil your hands again and make them into gnarled claws. Press your fingers straight down into the dough, all over, in multiple passes, to help create big, bubbly dimples and push the dough into the corners of the pan. Do not be delicate with this; your fingertips should nearly touch metal each time. (I’m being so specific about this because if you come at this dough with a soft touch and, I’m sorry, flaccid hands, you will be rewarded accordingly. 👀)

Sprinkle generously with flaky salt. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, until deeply golden and crisp.