My name is Becky.

I am the owner of Young Chef's Academy.

We have a lot to do today.

Let's go get cookin.

(happy music) Welcome to the kitchen, friends.

We are here in Rogers, Arkansas, and we are going to teach you how to make a fancy focaccia bread today.

Focaccia bread is a flat Italian bread that is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside.

We are joined by my good friend Anna.

Anna, have you ever made focaccia bread?

Anna: I have.

What's your favorite thing about it?

Anna: Definitely the texture.

The texture.

Well, let's get started.

The first thing we need to do to create our focaccia bread is to create our yeast mixture.

This is a combination of water, sugar and yeast.

Yeast is a living organism that needs food to grow, just like you and I.

That's right.

And the thing we are using to make our yeast grow today is sugar.

We are going to get this dough started by putting it on our mixer.

This is our dough hook.

And the dough hook helps knead everything together.

We don't want to add a lot of air, so we're going to just use that because it helps mix it all together and gets it nice and incorporated.

All right, so we're mixing this together.

We are adding with our flour, some onion and some salt to give it a nice flavor while it bakes.

And then you'll see that it comes together into a nice dough.

(machine running) All of our ingredients are mixed together.

We have a nice dough, Anna's going to lower this and we are going to pop this out and knead it.

You want to press gently down.

Fold it and then twist the dough.

So we put a little bit of flour down so it doesn't stick.

And we're going to push and fold, push and fold.

So we create a nice little ball here.

So now it needs to take a nice little bath.

We've put a little bit of oil in here.

We're going to give it a nice bath and then we are going to put it aside and let it rise.

All right, friends, we have let our dough rise for one hour.

We're going to pull that out.

And let's see if you can tell the difference between the one that we have had rise and the one that we just made.

Look how big that is.

Anna is going to put that in our pan.

And as she pushes it, it just stretches across the whole pan.

She's using her fingers to push it around evenly.

Doesn't that look cool?

Now she's going to brush it with a little bit of oil, and after it's brushed, we add just a little bit more salt because we really love flavor here at Young Chef's Academy.

Great job, Anna.

(light music) Now that she's done with that, there's one last thing we need to do.

I know you're so excited to see the finished product, but we have to let it rise for just a little bit longer.

All right, friends, we are so close to the finish line, we have let our dough rise, and now it's time to decorate it.

Think of this as a blank canvas.

We are going to just decorate this to look like some flowers.

We've got fresh parsley.

That's going to be the stems of our flowers.

We have sweet peppers, red and yellow, an olive for the middle and some shallots and sliced tomatoes.

(light music) See what you can come up with.

Great job, Anna.

Flowers down here.

You can just break them apart and create whatever you need.

All right, let's put one more up here.

Let's give it a few more petals.

All right.

Couple more.

Perfect.

We're going to sprinkle just a little bit more salt on the top of this.

Now it's time to put it in the oven, bake it, and then it'll be ready to eat.

All right, friends, our focaccia bread is done.

Isn't it beautiful?

Look at that.

What do you think, Anna?

Anna: It looks really good.

You did a great job decorating it.

I love it.

We did awesome.

It looks delicious.

And we can't wait to eat it.

Go find a recipe that you can make with your friends and your family.

Until next time.

We'll see you later.

(light music)