Garden Focaccia Art

I have a catch phrase here in the Starving Chef’s kitchen:

“Food is art and I intend to play with it.”

And it’s true. I’ve been playing with my food and making art with it since I started eating solid foods as an infant. One might say I was born to be a food blogger.

Enter: focaccia garden bread.

It’s the epitome of food turned art – or art turned food?

With the peak harvest season right around the corner, this focaccia makes the best of the freshest foods summer has to offer. Plus I added in a few store bought items like pickled tear peppers to give it some extra zing!

Turn the focaccia dough into your canvas! I made my focaccia from scratch and then used a square pan specially made for focaccia (affiliate link). The square corners make all the difference when it comes to getting the bread to hold its shape as it bubbles and rises.

Garden Focaccia Inspiration

Make your focaccia your own! Arrange different vegetables to look like flowers, petals, grass and leaves. Here’s a list of suggested vegetables – most of which I used in my very own artistic loaf.

• chives – great for grass
• asparagus – great for ‘flower stems’
• shallot – sliced in half looks like a flower
• teardrop peppers – these are pickled but add tons of color and texture
• green onion – great for stalks and branches
• cherry tomatoes – can make flower tops or a pretty design
• capers – sprinkled on can look like bees or bugs
• Italian parsley – for leaves and petals
• mini sweet bell peppers – sliced to look like butterflies or flowers
• mushrooms – for the ground
• zucchini slices – for the forest floor
• radishes – for pops of bright pink color
• crushed pistacchios – add pops of crunch and green color