This quick focaccia with onions, potatoes, and tadka is a delightfully fluffy focaccia with crunchy curry leaves, and mustard seed spiced olive oil. It’s pretty simple and doesn’t involve an overnight rise!
Jump to Recipe
Focaccia with crunchy curry leaves, mustard seed spiced olive oil, onions, and potatoes. I’m very excited to talk about the inspiration for this one! So I saw Lisa from Okonomi Kitchen’s focaccia with miso chili oil and loved her Japanese twist on this delightfully fluffy bake. I wanted to see if I could pull off an Indian twist on focaccia. Earlier this year, I fell in love with Priya Krishna’s dahi toast, which is a yogurt sandwich with a tadka of curry leaves and mustard seeds on top of the sandwich. A tadka is pretty much just a tempering of spices in oil. You typically don’t eat curry leaves, but these curry leaves are crisped up in olive oil and are made for eating. And voila. Fluffy focaccia with delightfully crunchy, flavorful toppings.
This is a quick focaccia, which means there’s no overnight rise or second proofing! In other words, it satisfies focaccia cravings efficiently.
What You’ll Need For This Focaccia
Bread flour. I prefer using bread flour because it results in a chewier focaccia, but you can substitute all purpose flour as well for a different texture.
Active dry yeast or instant yeast. For rising.
Olive oil. To soften the focaccia, infusing some moisture and making it easier to work with. Also the base of the tadka.
Onions and potatoes. Vegetables for topping the focaccia.
Curry leaves. If you haven’t tried crispy curry leaves yet, this is a sign.
Mustard seeds. Another ingredient in our tadka!
Tips for Making This Focaccia
Find a warm spot. After mixing the dough, let it double in size for about an hour in a warm spot. It is winter and my house is cold, so I chose to let it rise in the oven with the light on. You gotta do what you gotta do.
Make the tadka quickly. A tadka is a 1-2 minute job. You need to make sure the oil is HOT before putting the mustard seeds and curry leaves in. Go for medium-high heat!
For a fluffier focaccia, consider going for an overnight rise and/or second proofing. I won’t talk about in this blog post, but as with many things, longer is better for focaccia.
Quick Focaccia with Onions, Potatoes, and Tadka
Ingredients
- 1½ cups bread flour (120g)
- 1¼ tsp active dry yeast (2.8g)
- ¾ cup lukewarm water
- 1 tsp sugar (4g)
- 1 tsp salt (6g)
- 2 tbsp olive oil, divided (20g)
- ½ red onion, thinly slice
- ½ white potato, thinly sliced
tadka
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 1.5 tsp mustard seeds
- 20 curry leaves
Instructions
- Activate the yeast. Mix active dry yeast, lukewarm water, and sugar. Wait until it is foamy, which should take about 5 minutes. In the mean time, measure flour.
- Mix flour with salt and the yeast mixture. Mix with a rubber or wooden spoon until a sticky ball of dough forms. Add 1 tbsp of olive oil to easily bring it together. Cover with a dish towel and let it rise in a warm place until it doubles in size, so about 1 hour.
- Preheat the oven to 425 F.
- Grease or line a 10-inch cast-iron skillet. Pour the dough in. Drizzle 1 tbsp of olive oil on top an use your fingers to stretch the dough so it fills the skillet. Then dimple the dough. Top with onions and potatoes. Bake for 20-22 minutes, until the focaccia is nice and golden.
- While the focaccia bakes, heat ¼ cup olive oil in a small pan over medium heat. Once you are sure the oil is hot, increase heat to medium-high and add mustard seeds. They should pop and sputter immediately. Toss in curry leaves and remove the pan from heat.
- When the focaccia is done, let it cool before serving. Top with the spiced oil.
Notes
Wowww the pairing with the salad sounds INCREDIBLE. And the sourdough twist! Love that.
Hi. This is INSANELY good. I did a few things differently because of what I had available (and what I didn’t have time to run to the grocers to get), and I’ll clarify that here, but stellar idea — star of a very simple dinner with a cumin-scented sweet potato and green bean salad.
I used 70g of low-hydration sourdough discard (an AP flour discard, hydration was about 75-80%). The added flour was bread flour (half-white, half whole-wheat… all I had), and I added maybe an additional 30g just to aim for a workable (but very, very loose) consistency.
My curry leaves in the fridge were done (some accidentally froze), so I added a small amount of cumin seed and two tbsp of fennugreek to the tadka instead. Topped it with flake salt. Very, very, very tasty.
This stuck badly to the pan despite oiling it — I would recommend lining with parchment paper.
Oh my GOODNESS, this was incredible. I’ve wanted to do a focaccia for a while, but often find the toppings not to my taste. This was on point. That said, I had to make a few adjustments to accommodate my kitchen. They’re as follows:
— I didn’t have the time to run to the grocery to get curry leaves. I used 1.5 tsp cumin seed and 2 tsp methi instead (with the brown mustard seed) especially because methi and potatoes are friends.
— I added sourdough discard. 70g, at 75% hydration. I adjusted for it, it turned out beautifully.
— I used shallots instead of regular onions, it’s a little easier on my mother’s GERD prone stomach.
SO TASTY. Oh my absolute goodness. Thank you for this recipe!
Oof I think this recipe was made before I started using grams for baking so it is based on a conversion I used for 1 1/2 cups! Sorry about that – I’ll remove it. If grams are used in any more recent recipes it should be accurate 🙂 Hope it still turned out ok!
Hello! Is the gram measurement for the bread flour accurate? It was very wet and I had to had more to make it come together.
Oh no! Did you check if your yeast was active? Or maybe the temperature is the issue? I usually let it rise in the oven with the light on so it is warm enough!
It’s been sitting for over an hour and it didn’t rise🥲🥲what do I do now
Yes that should work! Since whole wheat pastry flour has a lower protein content than bread flour it might be too wet with the proportions of the recipe, so maybe add a little water at a time or a little bit more flour.
Would whole wheat pastry flour work? Thank you