Basics Series

Bread Recipes Quick Beginner

Focaccia Pizza

(one sliced focaccia, sauce, cheese, and a second trip to the oven)

By Ido

· August 2026 · ★ Rate this recipe

Whole baked focaccia pizza with melted mozzarella, sliced green olives, and fresh basil, on a wooden board

Focaccia pizza is the easiest pizza night you will ever run. The technique is one cut: slice a baked focaccia in half horizontally. Everything else is sauce, cheese, toppings, and a second short trip to the oven. No dough to stretch, no proofing to time around dinner, just a loaf you already made. If you have not made the base yet, start with my no-knead focaccia, this recipe picks up right where that one leaves off.

Prep

min

Cook

10-12

min

Serves

people

Level

Beginner

This is closer to a Roman pizza al taglio than a Neapolitan pie, thick, airy, cut into squares, and built for feeding a group without anyone waiting for the next pie out of the oven. Because the focaccia is already fully baked, the oven’s only job the second time around is melting cheese and getting a little color, which is why the whole thing takes barely ten minutes.

Cross-section of a plain baked focaccia showing the airy, open crumb before it is topped — Start with a fully baked, cooled focaccia, the crumb should already look like this

Ingredients

What you need

Serves 4 · tap to check off

1 batch baked no-knead focaccia, cooled
Tomato sauce (store-bought, or your own)
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Shredded parmesan cheese
Green or kalamata olives, sliced
Fresh basil leaves
Thinly sliced red onion (optional)

How to Make Focaccia Pizza

Slice the focaccia in half horizontally. Cut straight through the middle to get two flat halves, each with a crisp, golden top crust. This gives you a thin-crust pizza from a single loaf.

Spread the sauce. Cover each half generously with tomato sauce, right out to the edges.

Add the cheeses. Scatter shredded mozzarella and parmesan evenly over the sauce.

Add your toppings. Scatter sliced olives, red onion if using, and torn basil leaves over the cheese.

Tomato sauce spread across a sliced focaccia half, ready for cheese — Sauce goes right to the edges, this is a thin crust so every bite should get some

Shredded mozzarella scattered evenly over the sauced focaccia, unbaked — Cheese goes on before the toppings, so it holds everything in place while baking

Sliced green olives and fresh basil leaves added on top of the cheese, ready for the oven — Olives and basil go on last, right on top of the cheese

Bake. Put both halves on a tray in a preheated oven at 200°C on the grill setting for 10-12 minutes, until the cheese is melted with small golden brown spots.

Slice and serve. Cut into squares while still hot and serve right away.

⏱️

Watch it closely under the grill

Because the focaccia is already fully baked, this second bake is only about melting cheese and adding color, not cooking dough. It goes from perfect to burnt faster than a raw-dough pizza would. Stay near the oven for the last few minutes.

Two Ways to Build It

The base method is the same either way, sauce, cheese, toppings, back in the oven. The only real choice is how much bread you want under it.

Thin Crust (this post)

Slice the focaccia in half and top each half separately. Two thinner pizzas from one loaf, crisper base, faster bake.

Thick Crust

Keep the focaccia whole and top it as one piece. More bread per bite, softer center, add a couple of extra minutes in the oven.

Close-up corner shot of the baked focaccia pizza showing melted cheese and lightly charred olive edges — What you are aiming for, melted cheese with a few brown spots and olives just starting to char

How to Serve

Pairs with

Slice it into squares for a crowd, it is built for sharing off a board, not for individual slices.
Serve alongside a creamy corn salad for something cold and crunchy on the same table.
Making a sandwich instead of a pizza with the same focaccia? Try my focaccia panini sandwiches, built from the same loaf.

That is the whole post. One baked focaccia, a few pantry toppings, and pizza night is done in the time it takes the oven to preheat. Drop a comment below and tell me what toppings you used.

Made this recipe?

Leave a rating, it really helps the blog.

Click to rate this post!

[Total: 0 Average: 0]