Focaccia genovese

Frank5 October 2019Liguria, snack, starters/antipasti90 Comments

Back in the day, one of our favorite places for a nice affordable meal close by the apartment in central Rome was Taverna Parione. Located on a small side street off the tourist-mobbed piazza Navona, despite its location it was the real deal, with excellent food, especially the pizzas and pastas. But my very favorite part of the meal was the starter we never failed to order: focaccia genovese, the world-renowned flatbread from Genoa, served with sparkling fresh mozzarella shipped in daily from lower Lazio and velvety prosciutto, slice fresh to order right off the bone.

Taverna Parione (like many places in Rome, if you knew where to look for them) offered simple, genuine and affordable eating of the kind that’s nigh on impossible to find in restaurants in this country. But you can recreate that kind of experience, after a fashion, at home. Focaccia genovese, or fügassa in local dialect, is not at all hard to make, albeit a bit time-consuming with its multiple risings. Your patience will pay off with a delicious savory snack, crispy on the outside, tender on the inside. And addictively delicious. I’m still amazed something so flavorful can come from just flour, water, salt and oil.

A well made focaccia is delicious on its own, just sprinkled with some coarse salt. But I usually like to enjoy it the way we used to back then, accompanied by sliced prosciutto and fresh mozzarella cheese. In Liguria itself, it is often baked with toppings—rosemary, sliced onion, cherry tomatoes or olives being some of the most common. However you choose to make it make a large portion. It will disappear quickly.

Ingredients

Makes one tray of focaccia, approximately 9″x13″

225 ml (1 cup) lukewarm water
1 tsp dried yeast
350 g (2-1/2 cups) all-purpose flour, or a bit more if needed
1 tsp honey
1 Tb salt
2 Tbs olive oil

For finishing the focaccia:

2-3 Tb water
2-3 Tb olive oil
Coarse salt

Optional:

Rosemary leaves
Thinly sliced onions, moistened with a drizzle of olive oil
Olives
Cherry or grape tomatoes

Directions

Whisk the lukewarm water and yeast in the bottom of the bowl of a standing mixer. Let the mixture rest for 5-10 minutes.

Add one cup of the flour and mix with the dough hook until you have a smooth paste. Then add the salt, honey and olive oil, and finally the rest of the flour.

Continue mixing with the dough hook until you have a nice, elastic and just slightly sticky ball of dough.

Slide the dough off the hook and into the mixing bowl. Form the dough into a ball and cover the bowl with a towel. Let the dough rest for a good 2 hours (or more) in a warm place until it has doubled in size. (If your kitchen is a bit cool, you can place the bowl inside a turned-off oven.)

Drizzle a good poor of olive oil on a baking sheet. Then scoop the dough out of its bowl onto the oil. Flatten the dough out into a roughly rectangular shape and turn it over to grease both sides of the dough thoroughly. (It needs to be nicely greased all over to avoid sticking.) Cover the dough with some plastic wrap or wax paper and then a light towel. Let the dough rest in the baking pan for about 20-30 minutes or so to soften.

Now spread the dough out with your hands, until it thinly and evenly covers the entire surface of the baking pan.

Cover the dough again and let it rest in a warm place for a good 45-60 minutes to rise.

Mix the oil and water in a measuring cup and pour it over the dough. Spread it out over the surface of the dough with the palms of your hands.

Now pressing the tips of your fingers, create little dimples all over the surface of the dough. Sprinkle the dough with the coarse salt and, if using, the rosemary leaves.

Bake in a hot (200C/400F) pre-heated oven for 20-30 minutes, until the focaccia is golden brown on top.

Let the focaccia cool on a baking grid.

Serve still warm or at room temperature.

Notes on focaccia genovese

Rising times may vary according to the weather. When the ambient temperature is cooler, your initial rise may take 3 hours rather than 2, in warmer weather, you may find 90 minutes sufficient. Of course, you can always let the dough go a bit longer if you like, no harm done.

In some recipes, you make an initial paste out of only one cup of the flour with yeast and water, letting it ferment for 2 hours, before adding the rest of the flour and other ingredients, then letting it rest for another 2 hours. This initial fermented paste, referred to as a biga or “chariot” in Italian, not sure why. A biga does add character to your dough, but whether it’s worth an extra few hours of your time is up to you.

The same variability goes for the second and third rises in the baking pan. The second rise, though, is really more of a rest, serving to soften the dough up so it can easily be spread out to cover the whole pan. The third is an actual rise. You’ll want to see the dough rather nicely puffed up, the better to make those dimples, where the oil will puddle, giving your focaccia genovese its characteristic look and mouth feel.

Also important to that mouth feel: cooling your focaccia genovese on a baking grid. That will let air circulate above and below, so the bottom crust stays nice and crispy.

A little sticking of the focaccia to the bottom of the baking pan is normal. You should be able to pry the focaccia up with a metal spatula. But serious sticking is usually a sign you needed to be more generous oiling the pan. Some people use parchment paper to line the bottom of the pan, which is more or less foolproof—but don’t forget you still need the oil.

Thick or thin?

The thickness of a focaccia can vary, too, but an authentic focaccia genovese should be rather thin, even if it needn’t be quite as thin as my version presented here. So many non-Italian renditions of “focaccia” are more like bread in their thickness. And the most disappointing ones lack the characteristic undulating crispy crust. At that point, you are are no longer dealing with focaccia, it’s just oily bread. You lose the whole charm of dish: the balance between the crispiness of the crust and the tenderness of the crumb.

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