Focaccia

Ingredients

500g of plain flour

360 ml room temp water

25ml honey

15ml olive oil

7g (1 packet) yeast

10g fine salt

Topping

2-3 tsp olive oil

Few springs of fresh thyme & rosemary

Flakey salt

This has one of the best effort of reward to reward ratios of anything I make. Focaccia is popular with every audience I cook for, I'm often asked for it, and it is easily the simplest, most faff free bread I know how to make. Will go well with almost any Italian dish as a side.

This probably isn't 1,000% traditional, but's close enough I think. You don't need to kneed it or do anything fiddly, and it has considerable margin for error. Once you make it a few times you can totally eyeball it. The metric to remember is the total liquid ingredients are 80% of the flour weight (so 400ml vs 500g here). Essentially, make a goop, then bake the goop.

Combine all the bread ingredients. Mix the honey and oil into the water, together with the yeast, then combine with the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Doesn't have to be perfect. (it'll be way too wet to work with at this stage), cover and leave for 20 minutes.
Give a quick mix with something stiff like the end of a wooden spoon, just to make sure everything's combined. Cover again and leave for 2 hours, it should double in size.
Fully line an oven tray with deep sides with greaseproof paper (ie so it covers the sides as well, not just the bottom). Grease it with olive oil. Scoop out the dough into it (it'll still be very wet). With wet hands (so it doesn't stick to your fingers) press it down a bit so it fills the tray. Make some indentations with your fingers to create an uneven surface. Cover and leave for another 40 minutes to an hour. Preheat oven to 220 (230 for cooler ovens, a bit hotter than usual)
Dress the top of the bread with 1-2 tbsp each of cold water and olive oil, a few sprigs of herbs, and some flakey salt. Cook in oven for 20-22 minutes. Until browned on top.
Rest for 10 minutes and serve fresh.