Olive, Garlic and Fresh Herb Focaccia on the Grill!

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Today promises to be 95 degrees with humidity that makes my hair as wide as it is long! In other words it is WAY too HOT to bake in my kitchen. As you’ve probably noticed, Jeff and I continue to bake all summer long and most of it happens on our gas grills. With a little experimenting we’ve discovered that you can “bake” just about anything on the BBQ, click here to see some of our other favorites! For this focaccia, which is traditionally done in the home oven with lots of olive oil drizzled on top (page 150), I used a metal pie plate to keep all the oil and toppings in place. This technique is great for indoor or outside baking.

Do you Kindle? Do you know what a Kindle is? Recently Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day became available on Kindle, which is an electronic wireless reading device, that allows you to look at books on a screen. It seems like an amazing way to carry an entire library with you all the time. I’ve never seen one and I’m very curious what you think of this concept??? If you have one, do you use it for cookbooks?

To make the focaccia,

1/2 pound (orange size) piece of dough. I used the master recipe, but the olive oil dough (page 134), European Peasant (page 46), Italian Semolina (page 80) or whole wheat doughs work well too!

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more to drizzle over dough

1/4 cup olives, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

Fresh rosemary and oregano to taste (these came from my garden!)

Coarse salt to taste

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About 20 minutes before baking preheat your gas grill to 450 degrees, that is high-medium on mine. (We have not tried these recipes on charcoal grills. If you do, be careful that the temperature is even and that you check the bottom of the dough regularly for burning.)

Grease a metal pie pan with the olive oil and set aside.

Dust the surface of the refrigerated piece of dough with flour and quickly shape into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter turn as you go.

Flatten the ball into a 1/2 inch round, using your hands and/or a rolling pin. Place the round into the prepared pie plate. Cover the dough with the toppings and let sit for 20 minutes, while your grill heats up.

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Right before baking on the grill, drizzle with more olive oil and dimple the dough with your fingers. This will prevent the dough from rounding too much and pushing all of the topping off.

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Place the pie plate directly on the grates. Shut the grill and allow to bake for about 15-20 minutes. It took about the same time as the chicken breasts to cook.

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If the top of the focaccia is not browning,

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Use a pair of Tongs to flip it over in the pie plate.

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Allow to cool slightly and slice into wedges. Enjoy it warm!

84 thoughts to “Olive, Garlic and Fresh Herb Focaccia on the Grill!”

  1. This article is very old by now, I found it by searching the site for “humidity”. I’ll have to try to remember to check the index of my copy of AbIn5(ed 2) when I get home from work.

    I’ve been having problems lately of master recipe dough being too wet and sloppy, seems to be correlated with humid weather. Do you have any guidelines posted anywhere about how to compensate for humidity?

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