Tom Yum Focaccia

a big, bubbly, and bold focach!

Have You Eaten Yet? Here’s a new recipe from my kitchen to yours that I hope you’ll love! For more recipes, you can pre-order my next cookbook, Chinese Enough, or purchase Mooncakes and Milk Bread for all things Chinese Baking!

I find so much calmness when I make bread. Shaping the dough between my hands, the smell of it as it bakes in the oven, and biting into a warm fluffy slice brings me immeasurable amounts of serenity. It’s the healing power of warm, fresh bread! On Fridays I like to prep some form of bread (sourdough, pitas, milk bread, biscuits, etc…) for the weekend so that I can bake it up Saturday morning and fill the house with good smells and then rip off chunks or cut off slices (if we’re feeling civilized) to enjoy with breakfast. Lately I’ve been in a focaccia phase. I’ve tried a lot of different focaccia methods, from no-knead to long cold ferments, and finally feel like I have my own preferred way of making focaccia down. I’m excited to share it with you so you can make your own big and bubbly focaccia!

Tom Yum Goong + Focaccia?

One of the many beauties of focaccia are the endless topping potentials. I’ve added pork floss, gai lan, and Chinese sausage to my focaccia in the past. This Tom Yum Focaccia might just take the cake and be one of the best things I’ve ever baked. It is super flavorful, a little spicy, very aromatic, with pops of juicy sweetness from the fresh tomatoes. The tom yum flavor is strong and potent to balance out the amount of fluffy bread underneath.

Tom Yum Goong is a thai soup that is heavily flavored with shrimp, galangal, lemongrass, and chilis. The soup will often have tomatoes and mushrooms as too. To get all the bold and delicious flavors of tom yum goong, I made a “sauce” consisting of red curry paste, shrimp paste, ginger, and garlic. I sizzled the aromatics by pouring hot olive oil over, allowing everything to bloom, and then stirring it together until it reaches a consistency similar to tomato sauce so I could spoon it over the dough. My favorite red curry paste is Maesri brand and I love this shrimp paste pictured below. Both are kitchen staples for me and you can buy them at your local asian grocery store or potentially order them online. Maesri also makes a Tom Yum Paste if shrimp paste is hard for you to find, but I personally liked being able to control shrimp flavor in this recipe. Either option will be delicious!

A Better, Bigger, Bubblier Focaccia

I generally prefer kneading dough and haven’t had as greats of results with no-knead methods. So this recipe does require using a standmixer. It’s important to note that focaccia is a very high hydration dough, so it’s not going to behave the same as if you’re making something like milk bread, brioche, or an enriched dough. This dough feels most similar to sourdough, meaning it will feel quite loose. The high hydration is what is going to create all those airy bubbles. But if you don’t have good gluten development those bubbles aren’t going to last, which is why I like to knead the dough on the standmixer in two sessions and then give the dough two sets of stretch and folds to develop that gluten formation.

I had a friend comment that their focaccia wasn’t very bubbly or tall and that they were going to try adding more yeast next time, which made me cringe a little because I think it’s a big misconception that more yeast results in lighter and fluffier bread. I actually learned from my husband’s pizza dough development over the years that less yeast, good gluten structure, and more time equals an airier and more flavorful dough. In this recipe, the dough calls for 2 teaspoons of yeast which is PLENTY. You have the option to do the last dough proof either on the counter at room temperature if you’re short on time, but I think for best results you should cold proof your dough in the fridge, for up to a day or two for best results. I understand that one’s patience when it comes to wanting to eat fresh bread can be quite short, but a cold proof does wonders for bread. It allows the yeast to slowly do it’s thing and you won’t get that overly yeasty flavor.

So in summary, build that gluten structure and consider a slow cold proof! Then enjoy your fluffy, tender, and crispy beautiful focach!

If for some reason tom yum focaccia is not your thing, you can simply make the focaccia dough and follow your own heart with toppings!

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Tom Yum Focaccia