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I can’t believe the summer is almost over and I’ll be sending my son to senior kindergarten in just a few days! Lucky for us, our amazing shadow is continuing on with us and the new teacher has already proven incredibly supportive and gone out of her way to put down clear food rules for the class so I already have the feeling that this will be a great year. As we wind down the summer, I’ve been experimenting with quick throw together dinner ideas like this delicious potato and rosemary focaccia which I’ve been serving up warm with grilled veggies and hummus.

I first ate potato pizza while in Philadelphia for a tech conference a few years ago. I more or less ate dinner at Blackbird Pizzeria daily for most of a week, and enjoyed every single bite! Ever since I’ve wanted to make my own potato pizza – my favourite item on their menu – and I used these recipes from Christina’s Cucina and My Diverse Eats as my starting point as I figured out my own version.

How to make potato and rosemary focaccia (or potato pizza)

To make the crust, I used a mix of whole wheat and white flour since that is what I had on hand. Mix the flours, salt, sugar and yeast in a medium or large bowl, then add the water and mix it well. Cover the bowl and leave it to rise until it has doubled in size (between 1.5-2 hours, depending on how hot your kitchen is).

While you are waiting for your dough to rise, you’ll want to prepare the potatoes. Peel the potatoes and either slice them with a sharp knife, or you can pick up a handy mandoline slicer to speed up the work and get more even slices which will cook more uniformly.

The slicer has been one of my best gadget purchases just based on the amount of time it saves me and is a must-have if you want to make your own chips. it is great for slicing potatoes, beets, and more or less any veggie that you would want to slice – just be careful not to slice off you r finger in the process! Once you’ve finished slicing the potatoes, add them to a bowl and toss them with olive oil and salt, and set aside.

When the dough has finished rising, take a baking sheet, line it with parchment paper, and then brush it down with a tbsp of olive oil. Shape the dough to fit the surface of the baking sheet, squishing it out thinly enough to cover the whole area. Don’t worry if it tears – just pinch it back together – you won’t notice once it’s baked! Once it is ready on the pan, brush the dough with another tbsp of olive oil, and start to layer the potato slices in rows across the entire surface.

Note: If you want to make potato pizza instead of focaccia, split the dough in half, form each into a ball, squash it into a thin-ish disc and let them sit for about 10 minutes. Then dust with flour and roll out to be about 1/4″ thick. This should be thin enough that you can go ahead and top it and bake right away – 4 min on the bottom of the oven, and then 10-15 minutes on the middle rack at 200C.

Once you’ve arranged your potato slices, overlapping slightly in rows, sprinkle with salt and rosemary leaves, and bake in the oven, first on the bottom rack, or even better the bottom of the oven, for about 5 minutes, then place on the middle rack and continue to bake for another 12-15 minutes until you can easily pierce the potato with a fork, and any visible dough has nicely browned. To brown the potatoes, you can move the baking sheet to an upper rack and turn on the broil setting on your oven for a minute (though watch carefully – you don’t want to burn the focaccia). Remove from the oven and cut into slices to serve.

To make this recipe more as a potato pizza rather than a thicker focaccia, focus on the thinness of the dough when you shape it. Feel free to brush the dough down with pesto sauce before adding the potato topping.

Here’s the recipe so you can get started. Want to save it for later? Pin it to your favourite board on Pinterest.