With Focaccia, a Bit of Kneading but a Lot of Versatility By David Frank The Fastest Way to Caramelize Garlic: Melissa Clark shows how to caramelize garlic cloves while keeping their insides soft and sweet. Despite an obsession with pizza and a great love of flatbreads, I've spent strangely little time making focaccia. Every year or so, I'll make one, devour it, and then forget about it as soon as the last of its crumbs are licked off my fingers. Because of this, I hadn't spent much time delving into what I really wanted a focaccia to be. There are a lot of focaccia styles out there. There are thick and fluffy ones, loaded with toppings, and crispy, oily ones with a minimalist sprinkle of salt. Then there's everything in between. I decided to stick to this middle ground and bake up something that had crisp edges while still being light and soft in the center. Baking the focaccia in a cake pan, a trick I learned from the Los Angeles chef Nancy Silverton, does just that. It encourages the exterior of the loaf to turn crunchy as it absorbs heat from the sides of the pan, while allowing the dough to rise nicely in the middle. A cake pan also made for a nice-looking, gently domed loaf, more evenly shaped than the flatter, hand-pressed focaccias I've made in the past. The dough itself is pretty basic, enriched with olive oil and a little whole-wheat flour - not so much that it brings to mind words like "fiber" or "healthful," but enough to increase complexity. Another way to add flavor is to let the dough rise slowly in the fridge overnight. I tried three different toppings - two rooted in spring (a ramp and a rhubarb) and a third, more-substantial one cleaving to winter (potato with sweet, caramelized garlic). The hardest to get right was the rhubarb. The juice turned the center soggy, even when I reduced it to syrup first. Baking the rhubarb focaccia on a sheet pan, rather than in a cake pan, solved the problem, allowing more of the heat to reach the center and evaporate the sugary liquid. If you can't find ramps, you can substitute mature spinach leaves for the ramp greens, and sliced shallots for the ramp bulbs, caramelizing the shallots in a skillet before laying them on the dough. This dough recipe makes enough for three focaccias. But unless you're feeding a crowd, I recommend baking one loaf at a time and freezing the remaining dough. Focaccias are best eaten the day they are baked. With the dough on hand, it will be easy to bake them often.