Vegan Kitchen
Botanical Bread - Recipe And Guide To Make Floral Focaccia

These beautiful and creative Focaccia Gardenscapes are catching everyone’s eye online at the moment. Here is a delicious focaccia bread recipe and the ingredients used to create this floral fancy!

Focaccia Breadscapes, Garden Focaccia, Decorated Bread and Gardenscape Breads ..

are all popular tags for these pretty, floral creations that are causing a big stir on social media right now.

Focaccia huh. So before we begin. Lets all enjoy some additional homeschooling (Noooooooo) Two things only. You pronounce Focaccia like this (Italian accents optional) and 'Focaccia' translated is something like:

a round, flat Italian yeast bread with a crisp crust, containing olive oil, herbs, etc.

My eldest son who is 10 years old, a slime master and a budding bread artist had a 'creative home-piece' where he had to design a poster to advise people not to mow the wildflowers in Britain as they're feeding the bees. With this focaccia art bread being on my lists of 'things to do' we decided to bake it together. We were super pleased with the results.

Where to buy Focaccia bread? You don't have to! Here I'll share with you my Focaccia recipe that I always use. Its a BBC Goodfood recipe which never fails me.

Ingredients for the decorated bread

  • 500g strong bread flour , plus extra for dusting
  • 7g dried fast action yeast
  • 2 tsp fine sea salt
  • 5 tbsp olive oil , plus extra for the tin and to serve
  • 1 tsp flaky sea salt
  • ¼ small bunch of rosemary , sprigs picked

Ingredients for the bread decoration

We created this snazzy, art bread using:

  • Baby Tomatoes (the mixed coloured ones would be great for this - Perfect for flower head centers)
  • Spring Onion (for the stalks)
  • Red Chilli (Petals)
  • Jalapenos (Petals)
  • Mushrooms (For growing mushrooms in your garden)
  • Small broccoli stalks (for added garden greenery)
  • Red onion (these gave the beautiful swirls for flower heads)
  • Thinly sliced carrot (for petals)
  • Yellow Pepper (for sunshine and the bee's body)
  • Rosemary sprigs
  • Baby Spinach (perfect for leaves)
  • Rosemary, oregano and chilli flakes (for the 'dirt')
  • Sunflower seeds (for the bee wings)
Mother of Grom - Floral Focacchia
Mother of Grom - Veggie prep for the Floral Focacia

Method

  • Tip the flour into a large mixing bowl. Mix the yeast into one side of the flour, and the fine salt into the other side. Then mix everything together, this initial separation prevents the salt from killing the yeast.
  • Make a well in the middle of the flour and add 2 tbsp oil and 350-400ml lukewarm water, adding it gradually until you have a slightly sticky dough (you may not need all the water). Sprinkle the work surface with flour and tip the dough onto it, scraping around the sides of the bowl. Knead for 5-10 mins until your dough is soft and less sticky. Put the dough into a clean bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave to prove for 1 hr until doubled in size.

  • Oil a rectangle, shallow tin. Tip the dough onto the work surface, then stretch it to fill the tin.
  • Now is your chance to decorate. (It's decorative bread afterall) I started with my herbs 'dirt' and worked up from there
Mother of Grom - Floral Focacchia
Mother of Grom - Sprinking the dirt on the Focaccia Dough
  • Cover with a tea towel and leave to prove for another 35-45 mins.
  • Heat the oven to 220C/200C fan/gas 7 and pop your decorated focaccia inside once the oven is preheated
Mother of Grom - Floral Focaccia Botanical Bread
Mother of Grom - Unbaked Botanical Bread for the Bees !
  • Mix together 1½ tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp water and the flaky salt and drizzle over the bread

  • Bake for 20 mins until golden. Whilst the bread is still hot, drizzle over 1-2 tbsp olive oil. Cut into squares and serve warm or cold with extra olive oil, if you like.
Mother of Grom - Baked Botanical Bead for the Bees !

Obviously this focaccia was decorated with vegetables and would be classed as vegetable Focaccia. I have seen them online decorated with friut for fruit Focaccias, which look equally as impressive.

(Guessing you have to be selective of the fruit you are about to nuke in the bread oven.) Seriously, how good does it look?!? I am absolutely blown away with how pretty it looks. It tasted scrumptious too, although it felt somewhat sacriligious eating such a beautiful creation Now, the only question that remains is : How much do I sell my homemade bread for? :-)

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Mother of Grom - Blog - Author
MoG x
Mother. Blogger. Maker. Baker.

Queen of the Sandals and Breaker of Paper Chains.

Mother of Grom - Blog - Author
Father of Grom
Father. SEOnsai. Builder. Mugician.

Gen Xer Prancer and Breaker of Dancer.

Mother of Grom - Blog - Author
MoG x
Mother. Blogger. Maker. Baker.

Queen of the Sandals and Breaker of Paper Chains.