Gluten Free Focaccia Recipe

This gluten-free focaccia recipe was ten years in the making. Yes, I have been working to get the right gluten-free focaccia for over ten years.

I went gluten-free back in 2009 and I lost count of how many times I have tried to get gluten-free focaccia just right.

My mother-in-law makes the best focaccia. She got the recipe from an Italian friend years ago. She shared the recipe with me when I first got married and it quickly became one of my favorite breads to make.

But then I went gluten free. I tried to adapt her recipe and I never could get it right. I tried to adapt other recipes and they were not right either.

After recently seeing a recipe for focaccia in a cookbook I could not stop thinking about focaccia. I wanted some and was inspired to give a gluten free version a try again.

I started with my basic gluten-free deep dish pizza recipe. We love that recipe and I had never tried to make focaccia out of it. I knew the recipe would be a great place to start.

In order to get the bread just right, I changed it up slightly by using cornstarch instead of potato starch. I also increased the tapioca starch and added olive oil and salt to the recipe.

The end result was one that my family loved!

Is gluten-free focaccia the same as traditional focaccia?

Yes and no. Without the gluten you can’t get the exact same texture as normal focaccia. Gluten free doughs also don’t hold the fat the same, so you can’t use as much olive oil on the outside of the dough that you do on the regular version.

However, this gluten-free version is similar, and even though it isn’t exactly the same it is delicious!

Nontraditional Ingredients

When you bake gluten-free you often have to think outside of the traditional ingredients and focus on the end result. The end result is the most important part not keeping with the traditional ingredients in the recipe.

You want the end result to be as close to the real thing. Sometimes the only way to get that is to change up the recipe using nontradtional ingredients.

That is what I did with this recipe. I realized that all my failures were with recipes that all contained traditional ingredients. All I was doing was changing up the flours.

When I started trying other ingredients in the recipe I was much happier with the results.

A traditional recipe uses olive oil in the dough and on top of the dough. When I tried that the dough was much heavier and had a different texture.

For the dough part, I found it best to use regular cooking oil like canola or vegetable. I then used olive oil on the top of the bread and for greasing the pan. That helped give it the olive oil flavor but still gave you the right texture.

My gluten free focaccia also contains sugar. Regular focaccia does not. The sugar helps the yeast. Without the sugar, the texture of the gluten free focaccia is not right.

My version of the recipe also has an egg in it. A traditional focaccia recipe doesn’t. But the egg helps the texture and rise of the bread.

Gluten-Free Sandwiches

This gluten-free focaccia makes the best sandwiches. It might not make pretty sandwiches, but they are delicious.

We sliced it thinly and used it for sandwiches last week and everyone loved it! I will share the new egg salad recipe I made later this week.

This bread also works well for gluten-free panini sandwiches.

I can’t wait to try it for a gluten free roast beef sandwich.

FAQS