Spiced Orange Ginger Bread: Easy, Festive Sourdough Focaccia

This focaccia style sourdough spiced orange ginger bread is a cozy, sweet, festive experience! It’s perfect for Christmas baking, holiday brunches, or a sweet winter treat.

Chewy and sweet, cozy and unique, it is a simple, no-knead sourdough recipe, a convenient overnight rise, and orange zest and spices in the topping make your home smell amazing while it is baking. It’s perfect for Christmas morning or other festive events.

In this post, I’ll be providing step-by-step instructions and photos to guide you through making this delicious sourdough focaccia bread. Grab your mixing bowl and sourdough starter, and let’s get started!

Focaccia is a chewy, crispy on the edges, and tender through the middle type of semi-flat bread believed to have originated in ancient Italy. It is baked on a baking sheet or tray, which produces big bubbles and plenty of surface space for delicious toppings.

This recipe has a citrus-y, spicy, and sweet topping that evokes all kinds of Christmas-morning feelings, while maintaining the classic texture of focaccia.

If you’re looking for a unique but EASY sourdough recipe to try some baking around the holidays, this is a delicious alternative to classic cookies and bars.

It’s sweet, but not overwhelmingly so, which means you can serve it up for breakfast or brunch and not feel like it is a masquerading dessert! And this recipe calls for half whole wheat flour, which provides some fiber to fill you up as well.

It’s a delicious, breakfast style holiday bread that not only tastes delicious and festive, but also feels good to consume.

You’ll need some specific ingredients to make THIS sourdough focaccia spiced orange ginger bread recipe. You’ll want to have on hand:

• Healthy sourdough starter: this provides the tangy, sourdough flavor AND the rise agent for the bread
• Orange peel (finely grated or zested): for a bright, citrus flavor
• Warm spices: ginger, cinnamon, clove, and cardamom are my go-to options
• Butter and brown sugar: for a sweet, slightly salty, syrup-y, melt-y focaccia topping
• Olive oil: I like to put this classic Italian oil on the bottom of the baking tray for a crispy-crusty experience on the underside of the focaccia bread
• All Purpose and Whole Wheat Flour: in equal parts to create the dough for the spiced orange ginger bread

Step 1: Take your starter out of the fridge to start to warm to room temperature.

NOTE 1: If you haven’t fed your starter at all in the past 3-5 days, you may want to feed the starter, leave it on the counter, and let it get active and bubbly for 6-12 hours before continuing to step 2. I usually bake with my starter twice a week. I feed it after I mix up the dough I’m planning to bake, and I return it immediately to the fridge. It slowly gets bubbly, and I find it’s usually plenty active to move on to making dough right out of the fridge

Step 2: Mix the flour and water in a large mixing bowl, cover with a lid and let rest for 30+ minutes.

Step 3: Add the salt and sourdough starter to the flour+water dough mix. Use hands to combine thoroughly and lightly knead for a few minutes. Cover with lid and let rest for 30 minutes, then perform a stretch and fold. Repeat two more times, if you can.

NOTE 2: Focaccia is pretty forgiving, since it is a flat-style bread. I usually try to perform 3 stretch-and-fold rounds with my focaccia dough, but I’ve made it fairly successfully with just one or two stretch-and-folds, although the bubbles may not be as well developed.

Step 4: Allow the dough to bulk rise and ferment overnight or until doubled in size.

Step 5: Prep the baking pan, move the dough to the baking pan, and allow the dough to proof for 30 minutes to an hour while prepping the toppings and preheating the oven.

Step 6: Top the focaccia and bake for about 20 minutes

Please promise me you’ll try this spiced orange ginger bread at least once without changing up the toppings! It’s really delicious!

But if you are ready to try something a little more exciting, here are some ideas that I think would pair beautifully with these toppings:

1. Top with some candied orange slices and/or candied ginger chunks. This would be beautiful if you artistically arrange them!
2. Add some cranberries to the topping for a little pop of color and extra burst of festive flavor. You could experiment with either fresh or dried.
3. Make it seem extra wintery with a dusting of powdered sugar.
4. Sprinkle some mini dark chocolate chips over the orange ginger spice topping for a decadent pairing.
5. Serve warm with butter, if desired, or get fancy with a sweet cream cheese dip of some kind.
6. Slice the focaccia bread into your desired sizes (squares, strips, etc), line a container with parchment paper, and stack the cooled focaccia slices into the container, separating each layer with parchment paper. Gift wrap and tie up with twine and some greenery, and gift away as desired!

Focaccia is traditionally topped with a hefty drizzle of olive oil, so if you used really lightly flavored olive oil, you may be able to use that to substitute for the butter. You also could use coconut oil (which was my go-to butter replacement when I was dairy-free), or a vegan butter option.

I would suggest adding just a slight sprinkle of salt to the toppings if you aren’t using salted butter or a salted butter replacement for maximum flavor enjoyment!

Absolutely! I always make some kind of sourdough bread for Christmas breakfast, often cinnamon rolls or cinnamon swirl bread (or last year’s invention, which was chocolate chai sourdough swirl bread).

But focaccia is actually way easier to make than cinnamon rolls or cinnamon swirl bread because it requires NO rolling out on the counter top! Since Christmas morning is often a little busy in my house (with little kids eager to get on with opening presents), I plan to use focaccia for our Christmas morning bread this year.

You can keep it stored in an air tight container on the counter top for up to 3 days, or in the fridge for a week.

I haven’t personally tried freezing it (we always consume it before it makes it to the freezer!), but the internet assures me you can freeze focaccia bread up to a month. You’ll just want to wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and then store it in an air tight container.

You certainly can make a focaccia recipe and top it with orange spice ingredients, but this dough recipe is not going to work well for you, since the rising agent is the wild caught yeast in the sourdough starter.

I have had a lot of good luck with Love & Lemon’s recipes over the years, so I would probably start with her basic focaccia recipe, follow the steps up through step 5, and then switch over to topping the focaccia with my orange spice toppings.

Do note that her recipe is baked on ONE 9×13 inch baking sheet, whereas my recipe is baked on ONE 13×18 inch baking sheet or TWO 9×13 inch baking sheets. So you’d need to double her recipe to get roughly the same equivalent as this recipe.

If you’re looking for some additional holiday baking ideas to do with this sourdough focaccia spiced orange ginger bread, you may want to check out some of my favorite baked goods recipes:

Almond White Chocolate and Raspberry Oatmeal Cookies – These would make a beautiful Christmas present! They’re soft and chewy, buttery and just-sweet-enough, freeze beautifully in dough form or baked form, and they’re just GOOD!

Dark Chocolate, Cranberry, and Walnut Oatmeal Cookies – Another option for holiday gifts or to take to a holiday party. The same basic recipe as the white chocolate and raspberry oatmeal cookies, but with dark chocolate, craisins, and walnuts instead. They’re always a crowd-favorite!

Sourdough Cinnamon Swirl Bread – This has been a classic holiday baking recipe in my home for years (all the way back to when I was a teenager!). It’s delicious, fragrant, impressive, and perfect to wrap up and gift.

Sourdough Chocolate Chai Swirl Bread – Something about this bread is extra impressive on the visual front! I think it’s the dark chocolate swirl in contrast to the bread crumb itself. It’s delicious, cozy, and unique.

Artisan Sourdough Cinnamon Loaf – This recipe doesn’t require a topping, instead it utilizes sugar and cinnamon added into the dough itself to make it a sweet, spicy option. As a result, it has a crusty exterior and sweet-spicy-tangy crumb.

And if you love focaccia bread, you may want to check out my other focaccia bread recipes:
Maple and Brown Sugar Focaccia
Pizza Focaccia
Herb and Garlic Focaccia

I hope you give this sourdough focaccia spiced orange ginger bread a try and LOVE it! Personally, I’d encourage you to utilize it for part of your Christmas morning breakfast spread. It’ll make the kitchen smell amazing, offer that “special” holiday festive taste, and still be easy and simple to pull off.

And if you think this looks tasty or (better yet!) if you made it and tried it yourself, would you share it on pinterest or leave me a comment to tell me how it went for you? I’d love to see it get out into the world, and I’d also love to hear from you!