Dinner party trick: Pizza dough focaccia

Ever since watching With Love, Meghan* on Netflix a few weeks ago, I’ve been in the mood to make focaccia bread. Unfortunately, several of my previous attempts over the years have turned out badly. I truly don’t know why—I’m a decent cook and it’s supposedly very easy to make!—but it’s come out cracker-like or fully charred on multiple occasions. Still, I have some time on my hands at the moment, so I figured it was as good of a time as any to try to get it right!

When I looked for a recipe to follow in two different cookbooks I own, I discovered that both Joy of Cooking and Julia Turshen’s Small Victories base theirs on pizza dough. And yeah, I could have made the Joy of Cooking pizza dough from scratch first, as they instruct…but then it occurred to me that Trader Joe’s sells pre-made pizza dough for like $2, and going this route would mean I wouldn’t get flour all over my kitchen, and would increase the likelihood of success. So that’s what I did and it’s turned out perfectly all three times I’ve made it!

I topped mine with Parmesan cheese, herbs de Provence, and flaky sea salt. It was a big hit with the Bolognese this past weekend. My ultimate goal is to serve it in my garden with lemonade, as Meghan does, but I’m taking things one step at a time. 

Like I said, the recipe is from the Joy of Cooking, but this one is extremely similar/should work! (Note: I used an 8 x 8 glass baking dish as opposed to a baking sheet, and only put it in the oven for 20 minutes even though my recipe called for 25.) 

*All of my thoughts on With Love, Meghan are perfectly summarized in these two Substack posts: Spoiler: Meghan’s show isn’t what I thought it would be and Let Her Cook. 🥖