I make sourdough focaccia when it's clear my loaf isn't going to turn out. Here are simple tips for delicious bread.

A typical sourdough recipe calls for plenty of periods of stretching and resting your dough, which helps it ferment, form gluten, and develop flavor.

These periods are key to developing a good sourdough loaf, but resting your dough for too short or too long can lead to issues.

Dough that hasn't been rested long enough will result in a dense loaf. Too dense means your bread might be inedible.

Out of fear of a bad loaf, I tend to rest my dough too long (or sometimes forget about it altogether).

This has led to doughs with excessive bubbles and expansion. You can tell when your dough might not make the ideal sourdough loaf when it's more than doubled in size and large bubbles are seen throughout the surface of the dough.

While it might not make the best sourdough loaf, this is the ideal dough for focaccia.

If you were set on making a sourdough loaf, don't give up just because your dough looks slightly wrong.

My advice is to go ahead and try to shape the dough into a loaf. I do this for a few reasons. First, it's practice at shaping. Second, it's one of the best signs of whether you must resort to focaccia.

If you shape your dough and it falls flat and refuses to hold a round, firm shape, then you know you should probably pop it in a pan and make focaccia.

I use the same recipe for baking a sourdough loaf and focaccia. It comes from this TikToker and self-described sourdough enthusiast named Jackie and calls for 500 grams of bread flour, 375 grams of water, 11 grams of salt, and 100 grams of active sourdough starter.

If you're setting out to make focaccia, you can skip all the confusing stretch and folds and just mix the ingredients and let it sit.

How long you let it sit depends on your home's temperature, but typically, you need to let it rest for more than eight hours. You can also toss the dough in the fridge overnight to bake the next morning.

Once it's rested and doubled, toss it in a pan with olive oil and dimple the dough. Then, you wait another three or four hours before baking.

This is where focaccia is simple: don't stress about timing. If you wait six hours instead of four, your dough will likely be fine.

You're ultimately looking for a rested dough that has plenty of bubbles.

I wish I had known how easy it was to make focaccia when I started my sourdough journey.

I waited months before using my starter because I didn't have a Dutch oven or the right tools to make a sourdough loaf.

Making sourdough focaccia doesn't require any special equipment. A scale is handy but not necessary since you can find recipes using cups online. Plus, you can bake focaccia in a brownie pan, sheet tray, or whatever you have handy.

It's also a bread that's harder to mess up, which means you'll have delicious bread and more confidence to continue baking sourdough.

One of the reasons I love focaccia is how easy it is to add toppings.

There are several methods for incorporating flavors and inclusions into a sourdough loaf.

For example, if I made a jalapeño cheddar loaf, some bakers would add the peppers and cheese during the stretch and fold process, while others would add them during the shaping process.

This has led to issues. Sometimes, the toppings are concentrated in one part of the loaf, and I don't get an even spread of flavor. Other times, I've been completely wrong with the balance of flavors and got stuck with an undesired loaf.

For focaccia, I tend to add flavors to the top and incorporate them using my fingers, producing a consistent amount of ingredients throughout an entire loaf.

I also love focaccia because experimenting with flavors is much easier. I can section a loaf into four corners and try four different flavor combinations in one bake.

Focaccia tends to be a thinner, bubblier bread.

Since I typically use my sourdough for sandwiches throughout the week, I make sure my focaccia dough is thick.

I pick a smaller pan with higher walls and don't spread the dough too much, leaving me with a thick bread that's easy to cut and use for my meals.

My focaccia bread receives the most compliments. It's hard to find fault in a loaf soaked in salt and olive oil.

And considering just how easy it is to make and bake, it's the main reason I'm whipping up sourdough focaccia more often than a typical sourdough loaf.