Baking Focaccia in Greece

When last year the owner of the location where one of our bakery shops is located told me that he also owns White Donkey Boutique Hotel with an olive grove and produces his own olive oil, he offered a collaboration where I would come to visit and share my focaccia recipe with the hotel’s team. Baking focaccia with top quality olive oil in a boutique hotel located on a hill above the sea between old olive trees… okay, I’m all into it. We agreed to get in touch again in May or June to plan the trip.

My year 2026 is quite intense because of the number of international projects, baking consulting, and preparations for the opening of Bloom Bakery’s new venues, so I somehow forgot about this opportunity and remembered it only after Boris Gula, the owner, contacted me with a reminder that he would be glad to welcome me and my content creator Timofej in two weeks. Considering the number of events in my schedule, planning something just two weeks in advance takes a lot of courage, so I moved my long planned hiking trip and bought tickets to Kalamata.

It was my first time in Greece, and I loved it from the first sight. Everything was so green and beautiful, in contrast to the burned landscapes of southern Italy that I used to visit often and naturally compared with this southern location. The country seemed to be very relaxed and old school in a good, nostalgic way, which I can’t stand in my daily life but always enjoy when experiencing it in foreign countries. Such a contrast.

White Donkey Boutique Hotel itself was an amazing combination of quiet luxury and vibrant life: yoga lessons in the morning, an infinity pool overlooking the bay, and, of course, two donkeys that were surprisingly not white.

Georgia, the hotel’s manager, when I introduced her to Luigi, my sourdough starter that I was supposed to use in their kitchen, told me that her mother also bakes sourdough bread with a starter that is a few decades old and that she would gladly share some with me so I could mix it with Luigi. I politely declined the offer, telling her the truth: I prefer not to mix my starter with others. I later made an exception, but we’ll return to this story a bit later.

So I fed the starter with the soft, weak flour that was available in the kitchen and made a short trip to a nearby supermarket, where I discovered strong Italian Caputo pizza flour that was good enough for my baking goals.

I refreshed Luigi in the evening, starting with just 70 g of starter, 1 kg of flour, and 500 g of water, hoping to have it ready by the morning so I could make the dough. I decided to take the bowl with the starter to my room, just to make sure it wouldn’t over-ripen overnight, so I could cool it down a bit if necessary. The southern night was warm, the flour was weak and rich in carbohydrates, and so the bugs inside Luigi had an intense feast, making it almost ready around 6 a.m.

Baking in other kitchens is always challenging. I was doing my best not to interrupt the kitchen staff, who were preparing breakfast, too much while also trying to knead the dough in conditions that were not very familiar.

The tap water I used was too warm for my goals, so I needed to use ice cubes to cool it down. The mixer, or as they say in Greece, megalo machina, was working relatively well, but the oven gave me a surprise: the real temperature was about 40°C higher than what I had set. Also, whenever the temperature exceeded 260°C, the safety switch turned the oven off. So when I set it to 250°C, I was actually getting almost 290°C, which caused it to shut down and required a slightly tricky restart. The fridge I had expected to use for the dough’s cold retardation was set to 4°C and, as you may expect, that put me at risk of ending up with underproofed dough.

Somehow, everything worked just fine. I used iced water, the dough proofed longer at room temperature, the chilled dough was then left for two hours to get ready for baking, and the oven was set to 210°C which, together with the extra 40°C, gave me the 250°C I needed to bake the focaccia.

While the dough was proofing, I even managed to swim at the nearby beach. It was wonderful, with crystal clear water and mountain peaks in the background.

The focaccia was topped with a generous amount of the finest Kalamata olives. Using Kalamata olives in Kalamata… wow, I’m living my best baking life. And, of course, it was finished with the hotel’s own olive oil.

Everything was scheduled so that the focaccia would come out of the oven fresh for the dinner service at the hotel, which starts at 7 p.m. To my pleasure, the guests enjoyed it. I noticed focaccia on most of the tables.

When we discussed the recipe with the kitchen team, I suggested sacrificing some openness of the crumb by reducing the number of stretch and folds. That way, the process would be easier to fit into an already busy kitchen.

Now, about Georgia and her mother’s starter. She brought me a sample the next day, and I did something I didn’t expect: I mixed it with Luigi.

Here, I should make a statement. As a baker and technologist, I do realise that all the little magic I do with Luigi, like travelling with a living culture and always bringing it back to our bakery so we can continue baking with it, doesn’t significantly influence the bread itself. But it’s a beautiful story.

And I love stories.

Actually, it was not a starter. It was rather pâte fermentée, or old dough.

Georgia’s mother, with the gorgeous Greek name Eleftheria (which means freedom), received a piece of old whole grain dough many years ago. She keeps this dough in the fridge for a week, then adds a pinch of baker’s yeast, lets it rise, takes a portion for the next bake, puts it back into the fridge, and repeats this cycle. She has been doing this for around 50 years.

It’s not a starter, so I added 50 grams of this old dough when I refreshed Luigi at the hotel before going back to Bratislava. I also took a small piece with me to add to the “mother” colony in our production. So now Luigi is enriched with a few Greek yeast cells and this beautiful story.

I loved this little baking project. I’m very grateful to have been invited and hope that Luigi and my focaccia recipe will make the guests and team at White Donkey Boutique Hotel happy.