Focaccia Genovese!

 

My recipe for focaccia Genovese!

by Eirini Voulgari

I made sour dough focaccia Genovese! The one in the photo above is with sour dough, fresh rosemary leaves and natural coarse seasalt. Not long ago I made my first natural sour dough without yeast. I have been making bread and other goodies with my sour dough ever since then. I always save some dough after kneading and store it in the fridge for my next baking.

So I managed to make this famous flat bread: focaccia Genovese; which contains some olive oil inside and more on its surface and its base and it's sprinkled with coarse sea salt and fresh rosemary leaves. The dough for this crispy flat bread is obviously very soft, so that it is spreadable and forms plenty of bubbles. It contains at least 50% water.

If it's cold inside your house it is very time consuming to make focaccia Genovese with sour dough. But it won't take such a long time if it's warm (around 27 degrees Celsius). But even if it's cold, you can still make this recipe with dry yeast. Here's my recipe:

Ingredients for the dough:

• 2 and 1/2 teacups of sifted all purpose flour
• 1 teacup lukewarm water (max.: 35 degrees Celsius)
• 3 tablespoons of virgin olive oil for the dough, plus more olive oil for your hands, for the baking tray and for spreading on top of the focaccia before baking it.
• rosemary/thyme/oregano
• 1 level tablespoon of dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon of sugar or honey

Preparation:

1. In a large bowl put the dry yeast, the water, the honey/sugar and mix with a spoon. Add the olive oil and the sifted flour and mix well with the spoon. Then oil your hands and knead the dough. 

2. Oil a large bowl and place the dough in it. Cover it with a clean cloth. If it's cold in your place, cover the dough also with a warm blanket. Let it rise until it doubles or triples in size. This takes at least 1,5 hours.

3. Brush your baking tray with plenty of olive oil and also sift a bit of flour on it.

4. Take the dough out of the bowl, brush it with plenty of olive oil so it does not stick on your hands and place it in the middle of your baking tray. With your oiled hands press the dough and spread it to cover the whole surface of the tray. Then press the dough with your fingertips so that little pools are formed all over it!

5. Cover with a clean cloth and let it rise until it doubles in volume.

6. When it's ready, sprinkle it with the oil and water mixture.

7. Lastly, sprinkle with coarse, natural sea salt and rosemary leaves, or whatever other fragrant herbs you fancy adding. 

8. Preheat your oven at 250 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 200 degrees and put the focaccia in the oven. 

9. Bake the focaccia for about 20 minutes, until it turns golden brown on both its sides.

10. When you take it out of the oven, place it on a rack to cool a bit so that its bottom side will not get watery, but will stay crispy. Don't cover it either; for the same reason.

11. Cut the focaccia in large square or rectangular pieces and serve it warm.

I made this one with dry yeast and strong flour (with higher semolina content) and sprinkled it with salt and oregano. It turned out very tasty and crunchy!!!