Every Tuesday, Italian expat Emiko Davies is taking us on a grand tour of Italy, showing us how to make classic, fiercely regional dishes at home.
Today: The thinnest focaccia you'll ever see has a surprise hidden inside: oozy melted cheese.
The people of Liguria -- a region along Italy's western Riviera -- know a thing or two about how to produce a decent focaccia. The region's best known iteration, focaccia Genovese, is fluffy in the middle with a crisp crust doused in olive oil and salt flakes. It's a favorite for breakfast (dipped into cappuccino) or as a snack (often washed down with a glass of local white wine).
But Ligurian focaccia doesn't stop at one type: Towns all over Liguria produce their own focaccia. The town of Recco, known as Liguria's gastronomic capital, produces one that is a revered delicacy -- so much so that in 2012 it received IGP (protected geographical indication) status by the EU. So technically, like Champagne is only from Champagne, you can only get Focaccia di Recco in Recco.
This focaccia is rather simple: a paper-thin crust sandwiching oozy fresh cheese. As legend has it, when the citizens of Recco where in hiding during the Crusades, they created this focaccia with what little they had (flour, water, olive oil, and some cheese). Today you can find it in every bakery, pizzeria, and restaurant in town.
Like many regional specialties, the rules behind how the focaccia di Recco is produced are strictly traditional. It can be round or rectangular, but the important thing is the dough must be as thin as possible. It must be pulled and stretched by hand until you can read the newspaper through the other side. Bread flour gives the dough great elasticity, which means it's easier to stretch the dough without breaking it. You can do it with all-purpose flour, but you may need to handle it more delicately. Once the dough is less than 1 millimeter thick, it is placed on a baking sheet or pizza tray and dotted with creamy, super fresh cheese.
The cheese is important. It should be good quality, super fresh Crescenza or stracchino cheese. The “official” website of the focaccia di Recco uses double the amount of cheese I do -- so feel free to get cheesy on this one.
Then, another thin layer of dough is placed on top and little holes are cut to let steam escape. That top layer is brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt before hitting the oven until crisp and golden and the cheese has melted. It's a pure joy to eat.
Makes 3 to 4 focaccias
3 cups (400 grams) bread flour
3/4 cup (200 milliliters) water
1/2 cup (100 milliliters) olive oil, plus more for greasing and drizzling
2 teaspoons (10 grams) salt, plus more for sprinkling
1 pound (500 grams) stracchino or Crescenza cheese
See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.
Photos by Emiko Davies
Written by: Emiko
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18 Comments
I appreciate this recipe, thank you. I’ll make it soon ;)
You said “elasticity, which means it's easier to stretch the dough without breaking it.”
The correct word in reference to dough would be extensibility. A definition of stretch is extend.
Dough elasticity refers to a dough’s tendency to shrink after being rolled or stretched. Like a piece of elastic.
I stayed in Camogli, the town next to Recco, for a week and ate Focaccia col formaggio almost every day. I got the recipe from Manuelina and tried it when I got home. After many attempts, I'm still trying to get it right. The two biggest challenges are getting the dough thin enough and finding Crescenza cheese. I live in the Chicago area, and the nearest source is Bellwether Farms in California! The shipping costs were as much as the cheese, so I am still looking for a good alternative. Fortunately, there is a restaurant in Chicago that has it on the menu -- Davanti Enoteca -- and it is almost exactly like in Recco (lucky me)! Your article has inspired me to try making again...or maybe I'll just go back to Recco!
Having spent 20 years visiting and living in Liguria, I would say that they all have bread (including leftover focaccia), fette biscottate and biscuits around the house that they eat at home for breakfast (at the bar more likely a brioche). Do they dip the focaccia (the biscuits and fette biscottate for sure they do)? I mean who knows what people do behind closed doors.
What I would say is that a Ligurian friend's father (who would be 105 years old if still alive) used to dip his bread in his wine which is apparently something which was common in the past and no longer nowadays. I imagine he must have at least tried the focaccia cappuccino combination (he certainly wouldn't be upset by the idea). The mention of not eating something would invite him to reminisce about the war and how scarce food was. Next time I am in Liguria, I'll try it and let you know.
I enjoy reading your blog but I live down the via Aurelia from Recco and I assure you that Ligurians do not customarily dip their breakfast foccacia into cappuccino. Also, while Recco certainly deserves to claim the cheesy foccacia as its own, the true name is foccacia col formaggio, and this is how it is known among Ligurians
There is a nice youtube from Manuelina in Recco that shows the process of making it. You can see that one does not brush olive oil atop the pastry before baking but poured or drizzled on top.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bCiUReZvU4
Finally, to correct the "legend": The people of Recco lived near the sea and were vulnerable to pirate raids from the Saracen pirates. They built towers in the hills to watch the sea, and if they saw pirate ships, they alerted the town to run to the hills. The people of Recco would grab their oil, their flour and sale, and their cheese (or animals), and run to hide. They survived on this dish until the pirates finished looting Recco and left, and the residents would return to their homes by the sea -- or so the legend goes.
1- add a little bit of white wine in the pastry
2- once the dough is made, put it in the fridge for some hours (better for a day), and it will become very easy to stretch it. It's also ok to make a lot of dough and put it in the freezer.
3- mix the cheese with a little bit of milk.
:)
Living in the middle of nowhere has its disadvantages.
(Focaccia Genovese with cappuccino? Are you kidding? An Italian could choke to death for that! ;)
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