The easiest homemade bread for an irresistible sandwich

By Genevieve Ko, The New York Times

Making yeasted bread is one of the few acts of cooking where ingredients actually come to life. Dough expands in size and flavor when yeast feast on sugar to then release carbon dioxide gas. Seeing and smelling dough rise can be as restorative as eating the warm loaf, but only if the process feels foolproof and manageable.

And right now, very little does. There isn’t room for the uncertainty of sourdough starter, time to plan around slow rises or even the physical energy to knead dough. Or at least there wasn’t for me when I wanted a focaccia sandwich but didn’t have the bandwidth for an intensive project.

What I was really craving was mortadella and something great to eat it in — a tender focaccia like one I had at the slip of a restaurant Storico8 in Sorrento, Italy. The top was smooth and wavy with domes — not sunken with dimples — and the center was more air bubble than not.

In achieving so...