Bread Hack: Turning Focaccia Dough into a Sandwich Loaf

This method helps you turn focaccia dough into the perfect squishy sandwich bread or bread for toasting! If you regularly make my focaccia recipes (I know there are a ton of you 🫶🏻) I hope you enjoy this little remix... You can use my overnight, same-day or sourdough focaccia dough recipes for this method. They can all be found in the Lace Bakes community on Whisk or on my Whisk profile.

Unbalanced

% Daily Values based on a 2,000 calorie diet

Step 1

Make the dough from any one of my focaccia recipes (overnight, same-day or sourdough). Follow the recipe as stated up until the point where you transfer the dough to the oiled baking tray.

Step 2

Instead of using a 9x13 metal tray to bake, you’re going to use a nonstick 2 LB loaf tin. Butter the inside walls/base of the tin liberally.

Step 3

Shape the dough into a log shape the length of the tin and place it inside the tin, seam side down. It will be easier to shape focaccia dough that’s been resting in the fridge overnight. For the same-day focaccia dough, I just tip it onto a lightly oiled worktop and quickly fold it as best I can into a log shape before placing (seam side down) into the loaf tin. Don’t worry about avoiding popping bubbles while shaping…we don’t really want bubbles this loaf!

Step 4

Cover the loaf tin with another tin of the same size (placed upside down) and let it rest at room temperature. Covering the loaf tin with a towel or plastic wrap will stick as this is a very wet dough! The same-day dough takes about an hour to rise, the overnight dough about 1.5 hours and the sourdough about 2-2.5 hours. But just gauge it more on how high it’s risen versus the time.

Step 5

Once the dough has risen to beyond the top of the tin, preheat your oven to 180C/355F (fan/convection) or 200C/390F (normal/non-fan).

Step 6

Place into oven (middle rack) and bake for 30-40 minutes. The top should be a nice golden brown the the sides and bottom should be golden too. The bread should sound hollow when you tap it on the bottom. The sourdough seems takes longer to bake (38-42 mins) than yeasted focaccia doughs do (30-34 mins).

Step 7

Remove from oven and let cool in tin for a couple of minutes, then remove the loaf from the tin and let cool completely on a cooling rack. Cut in and enjoy!