Focaccia

You have been asking for it, and now that we have a bit more time in the house why not trying your hand at it?

After spending quite a lot of time this morning trying to source flour online and not managing, a trip to the greengrocers brought me home this beauty,

16 kg of pizza flour. Now, I am distributing it to all the local friends who want to bake their own bread much to the chagrin of daughter who would rather keep the whole of it for herself.

With some live yeast found at the butchers' a week ago, I have no choice but to bake and share the recipe of focaccia, as so many of our loyal costumers have repeatedly asked for.

This is the recipe I use https://ricette.giallozafferano.it/Focaccia-fugassa-alla-genovese.html

if you want to follow it word by word maybe a google translate will help you to have that genoese touch that mine is missing.

Ingredients: (Makes 2 focaccias)

1. Strong Flour (660 gr)

2. Luke warm water (440ml)

3. Malt (1 tsp)

4. Live yeast (25gr)

5. Salt (15 gr)

6. URRAH olive oil, or extra virgin olive oil (50gr)

for the Salamoia;

1. Water (50 gr)

2. URRAH (50 gr)

3. Coarse salt (Q.B. means as much needed)

Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Separately, let the yeast dissolve in warm water with malt for 10 minutes. If you can't source malt, a teaspoon of honey or sugar will do. I like seeing the liveliness of the yeast coming through in the form of a slight foam. Add this water to the flour little by little working the dough until all the liquid has been absorbed and you have a homogeneous blob. Add the oil and keep working the dough until all the oil has been absorbed too. Make a ball of the dough and transfer it in a bowl, cover with a tea towel and let it rest in a warm place away from any draught; let rise for 3 hours or to double its original size. When the dough has risen, divide it in 2 and make two balls. Place each ball on two 35X28 cm lightly oiled baking trays and let them rest for 30 min. When the time has passed, with the tip of your fingers press the dough from the centre to the sides of the tray and sprinkle the salamoia (water and oil emulsified) keeping some behind for later.

Create some dimples in the dough with your central 3 fingers, sprinkle the coarse salt (and some rosemary if you have it knocking around), and put it in the oven at 210 C for 15 minutes.

When it comes out of the oven, let it cool slightly on a griddle and sprinkle a bit of the salamoia to give your focaccia a sparkly look! Delicious!