Easy Chocolate Sourdough Focaccia Bread

Last Updated on December 12, 2025 by Jamie Saechao

This easy chocolate sourdough focaccia bread is soft, chewy, and dripping with chocolate flavor! Featuring both cocoa powder and chocolate chips, this double chocolate focaccia is decadent and delicious.

This mouth-watering focaccia is made with active starter and fermented for 12-14 hours, making it easy to digest.

It features a little bit of brown sugar and lots of chocolate chips, making it a great option for a sweet breakfast or indulgent dessert. My kids love to eat it for breakfast, slathered with lots of butter!

For more chocolate sourdough recipes try sourdough banana bread, sourdough browned butter chocolate chip cookies, or this double chocolate boule.

This recipe is based off of my traditional long ferment sourdough focaccia.

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Why You’ll Love It

• This bread is a chocolate lover’s delight!
• The long ferment makes this chocolate focaccia easier to digest.
• This is an easy, beginner friendly recipe. It’s simple to make.

What Is Focaccia?

Focaccia is an Italian flatbread made with strong bread flour and baked in a flat dish or baking pan.

The dough is long fermented and dimpled on the top, holding pockets of melted butter, or in this case, chocolate!

A long ferment gives your sourdough focaccia a tangy sourdough flavor and a beautifully developed crumb with lots of texture!

If you are new to sourdough, learn how to make your starter, feed it, and use your discard.

Equipment

• Use a digital scale like this one for most accurate results.
• Use a metal baking sheet or a 9×11 glass baking dish. Grease the pan well with butter before baking.

I like to use a rectangle baking dish for focaccia because it gives the dough a nice rectangular shape when baking.

Ingredient Notes

​You only need a few simple ingredients to make sourdough focaccia:

• Active Sourdough Starter: bubbly and active starter.
• Water
• Bread Flour
• Sea Salt
• Cocoa powder: Adds rich chocolate flavor to the dough
• Brown sugar: Use light or dark. This is a sweet bread and the brown sugar rounds out the cocoa flavor.
• Vanilla
• Chocolate chips: Chocolate chips are folded into the dough and on top right before baking.
• Butter for greasing the pan and focaccia bread.

*all purpose flour can be substituted, the bread will be less chewy.

Variations

• Use mini chocolate chips or dark chocolate chips for a change up
• Add chopped walnuts or pecans and sprinkle them on top
• Drizzle homemade caramel sauce for an even more delicious focaccia
• Add peppermint for holiday flair!

How To Chocolate Focaccia Bread

Mix Dough: Mix the water and active starter in a large bowl.  Add the flour, brown sugar, salt, cocoa powder and vanilla and salt and mix until you have a loose ball of dough – it will feel sticky. Cover with plastic wrap or a damp tea towel and let rest for 30 minutes.

Stretch + Folds: Perform one set of stretches and folds to help the dough form into a ball and develop the gluten. Lift one side of the dough, stretch it up, and fold it back over itself. Work your way around the dough 3-4 times or until it will no longer stretch.

Do 3-4 rounds of stretch and folds, spaced 20 minutes apart.

Bulk Rise: Cover the dough with plastic wrap and allow it to rise in a warm spot for 12-14 hours until it doubles or even triples in size.

With focaccia, the dough is ready when it has at least doubled, is very jiggly and smooth on the surface, and has a few bubbles peaking out. It is a big, bouncy dough.

When it comes to fermentation times, temperature matters!  The warmer your kitchen environment, the faster the dough will rise. The slower the temp, the longer it will take to rise.

Second Rise: Generously grease your pan with 2-3 tablespoons of butter. Dump the fermented dough into the pan, covering both sides of it with butter.

Stretch the dough into a rectangle and scatter 1/2 cup of chocolate chips over half of the dough. Fold the dough in half, then gently push it into the shape of a rectangle. You may need to rotate it to fit horizontally in the pan.

Cover and let it ferment for 1-2 hours or until it has doubled.

If you are using a baking pan, like I am, the dough will spread out and almost fill the pan as it rises. 

Dimple The Dough: When ready, use your fingertips to dimple the dough. I like to push my fingertips all the way to the bottom of the pan, which helps the dough spread out. Push the dough into the corners of the pan as you dimple it.

Add Chocolate Chips: Sprinkle remaining chocolate chips all over the surface of the dough.

Bake: Bake for 30-35 minutes at 375 degrees F. The bread is done when it reaches an internal temperature of 190-200 degrees F.

Tip: Let the dough rest for thirty minutes before slicing. Allowing the dough to cool will improve the texture of the bread. 

​Recipe Notes + Tips

• Grease your pan very well with lots of butter before adding the dough.
• Do not worry about over-fermenting the dough, with focaccia you want a long ferment!
• Temperature: this recipe is based off a kitchen temperature of 72-73 degrees. If your kitchen is warmer, the dough will ferment faster.  If it is cooler, you may want it to ferment longer.

Baking Timeline

Here is the general baking timeline I used for creating this double chocolate focaccia bread:

• 6 pm:  Mix the dough and cover.
• 6:30 pm: begin stretch and folds, repeat every 20-30 minutes.
• 8:00 am: Transfer dough to baking sheet for second ferment.
• 10:00 pm:  Bake

Timing tip: This is a very flexible recipe! You can start the dough anytime you want, just make sure it has at least 10-12 hours to bulk ferment and has doubled in size when you start the second ferment (based on 72 degrees F).

Storage

Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days. This bread is great toasted!