Sweet Orange Focaccia Bread

I love focaccia. It’s got a crisp crust and an airy light interior. It’s soft with chew. Generally, focaccia is a savory bread. So I wanted to set out to make a dessert type focaccia. Enter sweet orange focaccia.

This is kind of like a Creamsicle flavor, but more refined. It uses orange juice and orange zest in the bread and glaze and orange zest in the whipped cream. It might seem odd to make a whipped cream and then put it on the bread pre-bake, but it melts down into the bread as it cooks and the top gets this soft sweet sponge top. Then you can top it with the quick orange glaze It’s so so good.

Because this dough has sugar and butter in it, it may take slightly longer to rise, depending on the temperature of your house. It is definitely worth the wait though.

The all star ingredients that take this dough from a standard focaccia to sweet orange.
Unlike some doughs, it won’t seem to explode to much bigger size, but when you press your fingers into it, it will deflate and the indentations will stay

Sweet Orange Focaccia

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Ingredients

  • 250 g AP Flour
  • ½ cup Orange juice room temperature
  • 1 tbsp Whole milk room temperature
  • 60 g Granulated sugar
  • 5.5 g Instant yeast (~2 scant tsp)
  • ¼ cup Unsalted butter melted
  • 1 Orange
  • pinch Salt

Whipped cream

  • ½ cup Heavy whipping cream
  • ¼ tsp Cinnamon
  • ¼ tsp Vanilla extract
  • 1 tbsp Confectioners' sugar

Orange Glaze (optional)

  • ½ cup Confectioners' sugar sifted
  • 1 tbsp Orange juice
  • 1 tsp Orange zest

Instructions

  • Mix together flour, sugar and pinch of salt in bowl of stand mixer with dough hook attached. Once mixed, add instant yeast to dry ingredients.
  • Zest half an orange into melted butter, and stir to combine. Add 1 tbsp whole milk to your orange juice.
  • Add the milk and orange juice mixture into the dry ingredients and begin mixer on low. Ingredients most likely will not fully combine, but mix for about 1 minute until they have come together as much as possible. Slowly pour in the butter and orange zest mixture and after dough has come together increase mixer speed to low medium. Mix dough for 5-8 minutes until it is smooth and stretchy. Dough should not be sticking to the bowl at all.
  • Remove dough, lightly grease the mixing bowl, and return dough to bowl. Cover and allow to rise in a warm spot until dough has doubled in size. Because the dough has a high sugar content it will be slower to rise and this could take over an hour in a cool environment.
  • I use an 8" cake pan for the dough and lightly grease it with butter, but you could do this on a lined sheet pan for a more free form dough. You will not get the same crust on the edges of the dough.
    Gently deflate the dough, and transfer to either cake or sheet pan. Press out into circular shape that is about ½" thick. Cover to let rise, puff up and double in size in a warm place again. This will take generally 45-60 minutes.
  • Preheat oven to 375F. Combine your cream, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla in mixing bowl and create your whipped cream to a medium peak.
  • Once your dough has doubled, dimple the dough and then spread the whipped cream over top, and top with additional orange zest.
  • Bake for about 25 minutes. Edges and top of bread will be golden. Remove from oven and transfer to cooling rack.
  • While bread is cooling, whisk together confectioners' sugar, orange juice and zest to form glaze. Glaze can be drizzled over individual slices or over whole bread. Enjoy!
CategoriesBREAD SWEET
  1. Jessica says:

    This was amazing! Such a unique take on focaccia, this was the first sweet focaccia I’ve tried. I changed the process up a bit by making it sourdough, turned out perfect! Can’t wait to make it again!

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