Spruce Tips and Caper Focaccia
It’s spring! Time to cook up some spruce tips. Today we’re going to make soft, pillowy, olive oil infused focaccia bread, topped with salty, briny, crispy capers and citrusy, pine-flavored spruce tips. Add a little garlic and smoked flaky sea salt, and you’ve got an amazing loaf. Personally, I recommend pairing this bread with an IPA- the notes in the hopes work really well with the flavor of the spruce tips, and the overall saltiness of the bread and capers is a great with beer. But no worries if you’re not a drinker, this spruce tip focaccia is delicious as a meal with a large salad, or it could be served with soup or as the bread in a sandwich. If you really want to have fun with it, make a batch of our field garlic hummus, and enjoy the two together.
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Foraging Spruce Tips
When it comes to tasty food sources, conifer needles aren’t the first thing that comes to my mind. They’re spiky, sharp, and brittle- not exactly the greatest sounding meal. But there’s one time a year that things change a little bit, and turn spruce and other conifers into tasty snacks. It’s spring time! Each year as it warms up, coniferous trees send out a spurt of new growth on the end of each branch. The tips are a lighter green than the tree, are softer, and much more pleasant to be consumed. Different spruce, pine, and fir taste different, with flavors of bright, citrusy pine, and darker, amber resin notes. All conifers are edible, except yews- yews are actually shrubs, not trees, and the needles are quite poisonous. Small caveat, that it’s possible there are poisonous trees in other parts of the world that I’m not aware of- I’m coming at you with a New England perspective. This article goes through some potentially toxic trees. Really make sure you are not eating a yew- here is a guide identifying different conifers to help you with that task. The three main types of conifer trees are spruce, fir, and pine. Pine trees have long needles, that come out in clusters at the end of the branches. Both spruce and fir needles grow individually along the branches, but spruce needles are square and fir needles are flat. Take a mature needle and roll it between your pointer and thumb- if the needle easily rolls, you have a spruce, if not, it’s likely a fir. There are many different types of pine, spruce, and fir trees. Spruce and fir needles would both work really well in this recipe, but pine tips are a little different- they’re tightly packed and dense. Once you know how to avoid a yew shrub, start picking and trying a few. Find the tree that you like the flavor of, and pick a few of the new shoots. Bring them home, and let’s make some bread together.
Looking for Bread? Try one of these Vegan Bread Recipes!
- Garlic Yeasted Savory Zucchini Bread
- 4 Ingredient Fluffy Easy Flatbreads (Vegan, G.F. Optional)
- Savory Scallion Cornbread Using Grits
- Stout, Pecan and Ginger Bread (Vegan)
- Garlic and Herb Vegan Nettle Breadsticks (Urtica dioica)
- Curry Leaf Vegan Garlic Bread
- Golden Sweet Steamed Buns with Raisins and Pecans
- Vegan Pane Cotto (AKA Bread and Bean Casserole)
- Vegan Cranberry Banana Bread
- Vegan Cornbread with Roasted Tomatoes
- Cranberry Bean Zuppa Lombarda
- Vegan Stuffing with Mushrooms and Apples
How to Make Spruce Tips Focaccia
Most of this recipe is the same as making any old, non-foraged focaccia. Focaccia is a yeasted dough, cooked flat and made with plenty of olive oil. You start with water, yeast, and sugar, and combine the three in a bowl to let the yeast activate. Once your yeast is all bubbly and awake you can mix in the flour, olive oil, and salt. While you can mix by hand, I like to use a stand mixer as it makes kneading a lot easier. Once the ingredients for the bread are combined, let your machine do the work. After several minutes, your dough should be pulling away from the mixer bowl, and forming a ball (albeit a soft, and fairly sticky ball). Transfer that over to a lightly oiled bowl, and top it with a damp kitchen towel to prevent a skin from forming on your dough. Let it rise in a warm place- this is going to be the longer of two proves. After about an hour, your dough should have doubled. Punch out the air, flip it out of the bowl, and knead a few times. Make it into your desired shape- you want it to be fairly thinly rolled out, and I like to go for a circular shape. Transfer that onto a prepared baking tray, recover with that damp cloth, and let it sit for a second, shorter prove. While it proves, mince your garlic and get your spruce tips nice and clean. Before the bread goes in the oven, you have to decorate it. Start by using your fingers to push dents into the surface of the dough- that gives the olive oil a place to collect. Sprinkle the garlic evenly, and add the spruce tips and capers. Top it off with some olive oil and flaky sea salt- smoked flaky sea salt, if you’ve got it. Into the oven it goes! After about 20 minutes it should be golden and baked through. Remove it from the oven. Unlike other types of bread, you don’t need to wait for your focaccia to cool for you to dig in. So get eating, and enjoy the product of all that baking and foraging!
Spruce Tips and Caper Focaccia
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp. granulated sugar
- 2 ¼ tsp. active dry yeast (one package)
- 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup olive oil (plus more, for top)
- 1 ½ tsp. table salt
- 1 clove garlic
- Spruce tips (Amount depends on size and type- I used 5 tips, but they were fairly long ones)
- 1 tbsp. capers
- ½ tsp. sea salt flakes (smoked sea salt flakes are excellent)
Instructions
- Add one cup of warm water to the bowl of your mixer, along with the sugar and yeast, and give a quick stir. Set aside for 10 minutes until the mixture is a foamy.
- Make sure the dough hook is on your mixer, and add the olive oil and table salt to the bowl. Mix on low. Slowly add the flour until all of it is mixed in, and then let the mixer kneed for 5-10 minutes. It should be fairly sticky but pulling away from the sides. Shape the dough into a ball, and place in an oiled bowl covered with a clean, damp kitchen towel. Put the dough in a warm place (I actually put it in my instant pot on the yogurt setting), until it has doubled in size (about an hour).
- Prepare a baking tray with parchment paper. Turn the dough out onto a clean, lightly floured surface and punch it down. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough out about half an inch to an inch thick- I made mine a circle, but you can do a rectangular or more free-form bread if you prefer. Place on the prepared baking tray, cover with your damp kitchen towel, and let rest for another 20 minutes. During this second proof, clean your spruce tips and let dry. Mince your garlic.
- At the end of the 20 minutes, preheat he oven to 400°F (200°C). Remove the kitchen towel, and push your fingers into the dough almost to the pan to create divots all over the surface. Sprinkle the minced garlic evenly over the dough, and add the spruce tips in little ½ inch sections (you can also sprinkle on some of the needles that fell off). Evenly spread the capers on the dough as well. Drizzle a tablespoon or two of olive oil over the bread, and sprinkle with the flaky sea salt.
- Bake for about 20 minutes, until the bread is lightly golden. Remove from the oven, and enjoy!
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