Sourdough Focaccia Bread Muffins

Mini sourdough focaccia bread muffins with a crispy, golden crust surrounding a soft, tender crumb. You can add lots of different toppings to these fun sourdough focaccia muffins to create a "pick n mix" flavor sensation!

Course Bread

Cuisine Italian

Keyword Sourdough Bread, Sourdough Discard

Prep Time 30

Cook Time 30

Fermentation Time 10

Total Time 11

Servings Muffins

Calories 195kcal

Equipment

Mixing Bowl
Digital Scale
12 Hole Muffin Tin (bigger is better here)

Ingredients

For the dough

100 g Sourdough starter active and bubbly
400 g Water can increase or decrease by 30g if desired
500 g Bread Flour
10 g Salt

For the topping

50 g Olive Oil
20 g Sea Salt
1 tablespoon Rosemary Leaves Fresh or dried

Instructions

Mixing The Dough
Weigh out your sourdough starter and water into a large bowl.
Mix the water and starter together briefly. Then add flour and salt and mix whole lot together until it forms a sticky dough. You don't want any dry flour left at all.
You can use a dough scraper or Danish dough whisk for this process.
Cover your bowl with cling film or a damp tea towel and let it sit for around 1 hour. It's ok if it's a little bit longer, it's not going to matter too much.
Strengthening the Dough
After the dough has been through autolyse you need to bring it together into a ball. Work your way around the bowl, grabbing the dough from the outside, stretching it up and over itself, into the centre. You should feel the dough strengthen as you do this. It doesn't have to be perfectly smooth or tight, just work around the bowl stretching and folding (around 10 - 15 times is perfect).
Bulk Ferment:
Now you want to leave your dough to ferment. Cover it with a tea towel or plastic wrap and leave it alone to rise around 30%. I only allow the dough to rise a bit because you don't want super sticky, over fermented dough when you go to shape it into 12 smaller pieces (it's much harder than when you just need to tip the focaccia dough into a tray like you would normally).
Focaccia is super forgiving so it doesn't need to be perfect!
Shaping Focaccia:
Before you start shaping the focaccia dough, add a teaspoon of olive oil into the bottom of each hole in a 12 hole muffin tin. I don't measure this - just pour approximately this amount into each hole. Set aside.
Once the dough has risen, you need to split it into 12 evenly sized portions. This can be a little messy, but my best advice is to use plenty of olive oil.
Tip the dough out onto a clean counter top. Use a metal dough scraper to gently cut the dough in half, then cut each half into six evenly sized portions (I don't weigh the dough for this as it's too messy. Just use your eye to get it close enough).
Rub your hands with a little olive oil and push each portion of dough into a muffin hole. Try to spread it across the bottom of the hole, but if you can't it will fill up as it rises again.
Second Rise:
Let your dough rise again. Allow it to become pillowy and soft and a little bubbly. Depending on how active your starter is, this will take a few hours.
Topping:
Once the dough is puffy and full of volume, you need to dimple the dough and add the toppings. I like to pour a little olive oil on each portion of dough and dimple them a little before putting my toppings on. This creates little crevices for the toppings to fall into
Place your desired toppings onto each portion of dough and use oiled fingers to push your fingertips into the dough and toppings to create dimples. You might see some bubbles as you do this. The toppings should be smushed into the sourdough focaccia dough.
Baking Sourdough Focaccia:
Preheat the oven to 220C (430F) while the dough proofs a little more and puffs up around the toppings you've added.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the sourdough focaccia muffins are golden brown all over (including the bottom).
Place onto a wire rack to cool.

Notes

Toppings - You can add any type of toppings you'd like on these focaccia muffins. One of the best thing about baking them in a muffin tin is that you can create a "pick n mix" so you can have 2 of each flavor or 6 of each or 12 different ones - it's totally up to you!

Sourdough Starter or Sourdough Discard - you can make these sourdough focaccia muffins using active sourdough starter or sourdough discard with a little yeast. If using sourdough discard, I like to use 100g of sourdough discard plus around 4g of instant yeast. If your discard is from a very mature starter, you can choose not to add the yeast if you like.

Hydration - this is a wet dough but it should strengthen as you perform stretches and folds. If you're worried, take the hydration down a bit the first time you make it - you can always add more water, but you can't take it away.

Nutrition