You Say Focaccia, I Say Focacce

Focaccia Started As A Disposable Plate

Bite into a wedge of focaccia and you are channeling the Ancient Greeks, Etruscans, and pilgrims traveling to or through Italy during the Middle Ages — not to mention a few random Renaissance artists.  From panis focacius, (bread + hearth) the Latin term for dough flattened over a stone slab, covered in ashes, and baked in the hearth comes today’s soft, leavened focaccia.

Originally, it was unleavened, used as “disposable plates” for soldiers, sailors, and travelers who needed quick, nutritious, easily transportable and long-lasting provisions.  The flat disk would serve as a dish, holding a variety of toppings, from salty fish to olives, herbs, and cheeses. Then, in early ecological fashion, it was eaten so there would be no waste. Ultimate recycling.

Liz DiGregorio and I think  that summer is the perfect time for you to perfect your ancient bread skills.  Then you’ll be ready to take focaccia with you on a picnic or pull it out of the freezer for a barbecue.  Or make a quick sandwich, grab a book, and go out to your favorite park just to relax.  It is, indeed, the best disposable plate. 

There Is More Than One Focaccia

While many Mediterranean countries have their own focaccia-style breads, we are focusing on Italy.  The Slow Food Dictionary to Italian Regional Cooking lists 15 different versions of focacce (plural of focaccia).  While they all share the basic common ingredients, the Italian imagination takes over, and each region puts its individual spin on the final product.  The toppings vary from place to place.  Sometimes the name changes. Some are savory. Some are sweet. Some are filled with cheese or vegetables. But all are delicious and reflect Italy’s regional pride.

Most focacce are made with a high-gluten (hard) flour, but some regions use flours common to their area, such as ceci-bean, corn, chestnut, cake flour, and flour into which mashed or riced potatoes are added.  Some type of fat along with water helps bind the flour and produce the crisp crust.  Lard was the original fat of choice, but now butter and good olive oil lead the way.  The best quality olive oil is required to spread over the dough to fill those yummy indentations that give focaccia its classic look.   Salt, to Italians, evokes centuries of salt wars, and bread with and without salt distinguishes one region from another.  Focaccia contains salt in the dough and as the final touch after it is baked.  Good table salt works for the dough, and coarse salt, like Maldon, sprinkled on top of the fresh-out-of-the-oven product is delizioso.

Travelers’ Aid

If traveling to Italy is in your future, you will find that focaccia is part of a large repertoire of flat breads. The thinnest is pizza, then schiacciata, and finally, the loftiest of the flats, focaccia.  Here is a geographical glossary of focaccia-diversity to watch for when you are on your Italian vacation and staring at local menus — all of it sourced from Elena Kostiouskovitch’s  diverting book, Why Italians Love To Talk About Food.  

Liguria: Focaccia di Recco (cheese-filled focaccia); focaccia di Voltri (thin dough coated with corn flour and baked on a hot plate); and focaccia Genovese (also called fugassa), which most closely resembles the focaccia we experience in the US.

Emilia Romagna:  In Emilia, focacce called “chizze”  are made, stuffed with slivers of parmesan and then fried in lard.  In Bologna, it is called Crescentone. Bits of lard are added to the dough.   

Tuscany:  In Pistoia they make necci, focaccias of chestnut flour.  Chestnut flour is also used in the focaccias of Garfagnana. 

Umbria.  The local focaccia is called “al testo”.  It is cooked on a testo, or disk, which in the past was made from river gravel.  Today, the testo is made of cast iron.

Lazio:  In Gaeta, the focaccias are called “tielle” and are often dressed in the famous Gaeta olives, the color of red wine, small and aromatic  

Sicily; Messina has focaccerie, focaccia shops; Catania schiacciate filled with cheese, anchovies, onions, and tomatoes and black olives; Syracuse and Ragusa call stuffed focaccia “scarce.” 

Tips, Techniques, and Recipes

Looking through numerous cookbooks, online recipes and videos, one can easily become overwhelmed by focaccia abundance. We have included three different recipes for focaccia in this post.  The first is from Flour bakery and cafe group in Boston,  and it is a really good American take on focaccia.  It will give you a poofier, lighter focaccia, perfect for splitting for  our sandwiches.  The second is a recipe from Cucina Italiana, which we have had to rework a bit, but it is chewy and coarser and a bit flatter.  The third is from an Australian book on Italian cooking, which uses only all-purpose flour (the other two specify bread and all-purpose flour).  This would be my go-t0 recipe if I had no access to really good quality bread flour. 

If you are mixing by hand, Italian cooks feel strongly that the flour should be mixed  into the liquid a cup at a time until the dough is too stiff to stir.

You must knead either with a dough hook or by hand until you can do the “windowpane check” with your dough.

If you use a blued/black steel  baking sheet, the bottom crust will be darker than if you use an aluminum sheet.  Both are very good as long as they are commercial quality.  We don’t like stainless steel baking sheets, as the heat conduction is so poor. 

All of them should be dusted heavily with semolina (semola) or cornmeal on the baking sheet. 

You can use your baking stones or quarry tile, which will give a crisp bottom crust.

Nonstick baking sheets or really light weight ones will give you very disappointing results.  The high heat required for focaccia (400F and higher)) will make lighter sheets buckle and also affect the traditional non-stick coatings.

A dough or bench scraper is your friend when manipulating a moist and sticky dough

 You can freeze baked focaccia for up to one month.  Wrap in a heavy-duty freezer bag.  To thaw, let it sit in its wrapper at room temperature overnight. Or wrap it in foil straight from the freezer and pop it into a low oven (under 300F) until heated through.  You can refrigerate a baked focaccia for only a day or two. 

You can freeze unbaked focaccia dough, too, after the first rise.  

 Chilling the dough encourages it to settle down and behave. After the first full rise, punch down the dough, cover and refrigerate it overnight, let dough return to room temperature,  then proceed with the shaping and final rise. You most likely will get a “holier” texture if you do this. 

And always, always, make divots with your fingers after the shaped rise, as they hold the olive oil and the salt, plus create focaccia’s signature look. Below the recipe cards is  a Cucina Italiana video on a little “secret” to improve the top crust.