Broccoli Cheddar Focaccia Bread
A cheddar broccoli soup all inside your focaccia bread. Serve with some garlic butter or dunk into your soup!
Broccoli cheddar soup has been a longtime favorite of mine since childhood. That creamy spoonful of cheesy soup with a hint of broccoli brings me back to the Velveeta shells and broccoli days and makes me so happy. My first job in a professional kitchen was working as an assistant baker to one of the best bread bakers I’ve ever met. We made all types of “out there” bread recipes and one of those was this broccoli cheddar bread. It filled the room with this perfume of fresh bread and broccoli. It was heaven right out of the oven. This bread is not only soft and squishy like any good focaccia, it’s also loaded with flavor. This ain’t your typical focaccia recipe and you should be prepared to enjoy this all week long.
Start with your preferred focaccia bread recipe or mine. It’s very simple and it’s no-knead so you don’t have to bother busting the kitchen-aid stand mixer out. Get your bread nice and proofed and jiggly, then we’re ready for the toppings.
Once we dump the proofed focaccia bread into the prepared 9×13 tray, it’s time to stuff our bread with the mix-ins.
We’re using cooked and chopped broccoli in here, which means we do not want to add excess water the broccoli is holding onto here. Be sure to press the broccoli in a fine mesh strainer or squeeze the broccoli in a clean tea towel. The drier the better.
Next, we fold in our delicious sharp cheddar cheese. Now you want to always go with a good cheese for this. Maybe you want to a do a mix of cheeses. Go off! This is your broccoli cheddar bread, so cheese it up the way you like it.
After we stuffed half of our toppings onto the bread, we will fold the bread like a pamphlet into three. Right side over, then left side all the way to the folder right side, then we will carefully flip the bread and drop it back in length-wise. Now we finish with the remaining toppings and a tiny drizzle of olive oil. Cover and this is the final proof.
After you get more practice with this dough and squeezing the broccoli, go ahead and try mixing the broccoli in earlier to the dough. This allows the vegetable to permeate more throughout the dough giving you that subtle broccoli flavor in every bite.
That being said, this focaccia bread SLAPS. Its so wonderfully fluffy and crisp with this cheesy interior and bites of broccoli. I want every focaccia bread to be this and I SURELY want a broccoli cheddar bread bowl to eat my broccoli cheddar soup out of from now on.
Broccoli Cheddar Focaccia Bread
For focaccia:
- 2 cups warm water
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the tray
For mix-ins:
- 1 stalk broccoli, finely chopped and cooked
- 2 cups sharp cheddar cheese, grated
Preparation
- Mix the warm water, salt, yeast, and tablespoon of olive oil in a bowl with a spoon until dissolved.
- Add flour to the mixture until a shaggy dough forms. The dough should be wet and jiggly. You may need to adjust warm water tablespoon by tablespoon.
- Cover mixture with plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes.
- Set up a bowl of warm water for your hands, then execute four stretch and folds from North, South, East, and West over each side of the dough with wet hands for each fold. Then lift the dough and coil the dough under itself. Cover in plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes. Repeat 3 more times.
- Gently add the dough to a greased 9x13 pan then sprinkle half the broccoli and cheddar cheese all over. Fold the dough into thirds and flip lengthwise in the pan and lightly press it into the pan without degassing the dough. Drizzle with olive oil and top with remaining toppings.
- Cover with plastic, and let rest for 1 hour.
- Preheat the oven to 400° F.
- Dimple the focaccia dough lightly from top to bottom, then top with whatever toppings you’d like. Bake for 30 - 32 minutes or until lightly golden and the internal temp registers 190°F.
- Let rest for 5 minutes, then remove bread from pan, and let cool completely on a wire rack.