How to Make An Edible Focaccia Charcuterie Board

A charcuterie board is a delicious addition to any gathering, and making the entire board edible adds an completely new and fun element! This focaccia charcuterie board is the perfect way to serve up some meat, cheese, and a few other items in a fun presentation. Focaccia bread is naturally a large flat bread and makes the base for this amazing board. The best things to add to a board like this include a variety of cheese, some cured meats, olives, and some optional vegetables.

Once you serve up this fun charcuterie board, people can simply pull off pieces of bread and pair each bite with some of the cheese and meat layered on top. You can make or buy a variety of types of focaccia bread, but we chose a simple focaccia recipe. This also pairs well with a soup as a bread and soup charcuterie board.

Why Make an Edible Focaccia Charcuterie Board?

A focaccia charcuterie bread makes a great addition to dinner: Serve this focaccia board alongside a dinner of soup or salad. This makes an excellent side dish and is big enough to fill out the meal. This bread board is the perfect showstopper to your next meal.

This board makes a robust appetizer: If you are looking for a filling appetizer, this board is hearty with chunks of bread, cheese and meat – truly the perfect combination. Serve this if you want a filling appetizer or if you want an afternoon snack. I served this focaccia charcuterie board as an afternoon snack for my kids and had enough left of to serve at family dinner.

The board is easy and impressive to make: A fully edible charcuterie board brings the ideas of a snacking board to entirely new level. I served this board on a large cutting board, but it is possible to serve this focaccia directly on a table or on butcher paper.

Making the Focaccia

Focaccia is an easy bread to make and can be made in just a few hours, or started the day before and baked fresh. Ideally you will bake the bread so it has just enough time to cool so it doesn’t melt the cheese before serving. Of course this isn’t always possible, so you can also make the focaccia in advance and assemble right before serving (once you place the items on the bread, it starts to make the bread soggy, so wait until you are ready to serve to put this charcuterie board together).

It’s also possible to purchase the focaccia bread, although I find most of the store bought focaccia to be thicker than I prefer. Since this is really the ‘board’ of your charcuterie you want a thin bread.

This focaccia bread is easy to make, delicious, and you only need 4 simple ingredients to make this bread. The best focaccia bread is made from dough that has been given time to chill for a minimum of 3 hours (and up to 24 hours). This leads to pillowy and airy focaccia bread.

To make this focaccia dough, combine your dry ingredients:

• 4 cups of flours
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast

Mix together and then add 2 cups of water and stir until just mixed. The dough will be moist and still a bit sticky. Coat the entire ball of dough in olive oil and cover. Place the dough in the fridge for the first rise cycle – ideally 12-24 hours. I made the dough for this focaccia charcuterie board on the day I assembled it, so only gave it about 3 hours to rise.

Remove dough from the fridge and deflate. Transfer to an oiled sheet pan and spread the dough to completely cover the pan. You can use your hands to help spread the dough out in the pan. Set aside the pan with the dough for a second rise for at least 1 hour but up to 2 hours.

After the dough has risen, you want to dimple your focaccia bread by pressing your fingers into the dough. Cover the top with a coat of olive oil and flavor. Since this focaccia is really the base to our board, I kept the flavoring simple with some large salt flakes and a small amount of rosemary. It’s possible to decorate the focaccia bread in many different ways, and you can cook some of your ingredients directly into the bread. Some of the best toppings to be baked into focaccia include olives, asparagus, peppers, tomatoes, and onions.

Bake for 25-30 minutes at 425 degrees.

Remove focaccia from the pan and allow to cool before topping with bread, meats and vegetables.

See the recipe card below for more, or for another great description of making Focaccia at recipe at Alexandra Cooks.

Tips for Decorating the Focaccia

You can use any food to put on top of the focaccia bread to make the charcuterie board, but the best toppings will be the ones you would want to eat along with the bread. Meat, cheese, and vegetables like tomatoes make great toppings and pair well with the bread. Below are some suggestions for laying out your focaccia charcuterie board:

• Come up with a general design before you start assembling your board. Flowers make and easy and natural choice for decorations. For the stems you can use sprigs of herbs like oregano or rosemary.
• Unlike other charcuterie boards where you want to cover the entire board, a focaccia charcuterie board should leave room on top to also see the bread.
• Except for soft cheeses, cut the bread and other ingredients into bite sized pieces to make decorating and eat easier.
• Rose salami makes a great decoration for your focaccia board – Learn how to create a salami rose.

Focaccia Charcuterie Board Shopping List

You don’t need many items to make a focaccia charcuterie board. Below is a list of ingredients we used to assemble this board:

• Focaccia Bread (buy premade or make your own with flour, yeast, water, salt, and olive oil)
• Brie Cheese
• Cheddar Cheese
• Gouda Cheese
• Oregano Sprigs
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Cured Meats

How to Serve a Focaccia Charcuterie Board

This is such a fun board to make and can be served as either the main bread during your dinner, a snack, or as an appetizer. You can place your focaccia bread on a charcuterie board or place it right on some butcher paper and put right on the table.

If you are serving this board with a soft cheese, you may want to include a knife or spoon to spread the cheese, and a knife to cut the bread is helpful although you can also just tear off pieces of the bread. Serve with napkins or plates.

Foacaccia Charcuterie Board Recipe