The focaccia bread that ruined every other version for me came out of a third-floor kitchen above a trattoria in the Castelletto neighbourhood of Genoa. It was a Tuesday in late April, raining off and on, and I had signed up for what the website called a cooking class but turned out to be four hours in Nonna Marta’s apartment.
Her grandson Lorenzo ran the trattoria downstairs and cooked the dinner version of her focaccia for the bread basket every night. She taught the morning class. Same dough, different hands.
The agreement, as she explained it, was that he got to use her recipe as long as she got to keep correcting his technique.
I think about that afternoon a lot. Often when I should be thinking about something else.
The Cooking Class Above the Trattoria
The kitchen smelled like olive oil and warm yeast and a little bit of the cigarette Marta had smoked on the balcony before I arrived. She was small, sharp, and unimpressed by my attempts to take notes.
‘Smettila,’ she said, when I asked her how many grams of flour. ‘You will feel it.’ Then she handed me a wooden spoon and the bowl.
The dough was wetter than I expected. Wetter than I would have made it on my own. Stickier too, almost shaggy, and slack enough that I would have panicked and added flour if she had not been standing behind me.
She told me focaccia in Liguria is breakfast food. Sold by weight at the bakery before seven in the morning. Dunked in cappuccino on the way to work.
I had read that somewhere and assumed it was a tourist line. It is not.
What Nonna Marta Got Right About Focaccia Bread
The first thing she corrected me on was the dimples. I had pressed them in too shyly.
She took my hand, pushed my fingertips down hard, and said the holes were not for looks. They were for the salamoia, the salty olive oil brine that pools in them and bakes into the crust.
The second thing was the oil. Most people, she said, drizzle oil on top at the end and call it focaccia.
Real focaccia genovese has oil in the dough, oil in the pan, oil in the brine. Three places, not one.
The word fugàssa is local Genoese. The bread itself is old, attested in Genoa by the 13th and 14th centuries, and it grew up as cheap, portable food for sailors and dock workers during the era of the Maritime Republic.
Marta did not lecture me on any of this. I read it later, after I got home and could not stop thinking about her kitchen.
What Goes Into It
- 00 flour, the soft Italian wheat kind. I get mine from the Italian deli on Sawtelle that also carries proper Ligurian Taggiasca olive oil.
- Warm water, around 95 F. Not hot, or you will kill the yeast.
- Fresh brewer’s yeast if you can find it, or one envelope of active dry.
- A teaspoon of honey for the yeast to wake up to.
- Fine sea salt for the dough, more for the brine, and a final scatter of flaky coarse sea salt for the top.
- A lot of extra virgin olive oil. Fruity, green, the best you can afford. This is not the place to use the bottle you cook eggs with.
- A little more warm water for the salamoia brine.
The Patience Part
This is where the dough punishes you. The first time I made this at home I rushed the second proof.
I had people coming over and the rise looked close enough and I shoved the pan in the oven. The result was tight and bready, not airy.
Edible. Not focaccia.
You need two hours for the first rise. A full hour for the second proof in the pan. If your kitchen is cool, longer.
I have learned to start it before I do anything else with my day, the way Marta started hers before her grandson came up the stairs for his espresso.
The dimples have to be deep. Almost down to the metal. Not a polite indentation, a field of craters.
When you pour the salamoia over the top it should flood the holes and pool there, glassy and salty.
That brine is the difference between focaccia and oily bread. It also flavours the crust from the top down as it bakes, which is why no amount of finishing oil ever tastes the same.
Marta also told me not to add rosemary. I had tried to put rosemary on it once at home, years before Genoa, and I felt sheepish admitting it.
She just shrugged. ‘In Recco, maybe. Not here.’
Focaccia di Recco, for the record, is a completely different bread. Unleavened dough, sheet-thin, stuffed with cheese.
People confuse the two all the time. They are not the same thing at all.
Bringing Genoa Home to My Kitchen
The first weekend back I made it on a Saturday morning. June marine layer outside, kitchen window cracked, the smell of yeast and warm flour pulling everyone in the apartment into the same room.
I used a borrowed 13×9 metal pan because Marta was firm about metal. Glass does not crust the bottom the same way, she said, and she was right.
The oil situation took the longest to get right. The first batch I made with a supermarket bottle and it tasted flat.
The second batch with Taggiasca from the Italian deli on Sawtelle tasted like Liguria. That is not romantic exaggeration.
Olive oil that fruity actually carries the bread.
I do not add rosemary. I do not add cherry tomatoes. I do not add caramelised onions.
Authentic focaccia genovese is dough, oil, salt. Anything else is a different bread wearing the same name.
The Honest Version
Homemade focaccia is one of those things that looks intimidating until you do it once. Then you realise it is mostly waiting. You are mixing for ten minutes and waiting for three hours.
The crust should crack a little when you press it. The crumb should be open and slightly damp from the oil.
The bottom should peel away from the pan in one piece. If you cut it too soon it gums up and goes flat.
Wait the ten minutes. I know.
I miss Marta’s kitchen. I miss the rain on her tiny balcony and the cigarette smell faintly on her cardigan.
I do not have her hands. But I have the dough, and I have the brine, and most Saturday mornings now, I have the bread.
Focaccia Bread
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Crumble the fresh brewer's yeast into 1 cup of the warm water in a large mixing bowl. Add the honey and whisk until fully dissolved. Let it sit for 5 minutes until you see a few bubbles forming on the surface.
- Add the 00 flour to the bowl along with the fine sea salt and 3 tablespoons of the extra virgin olive oil. Begin mixing with a wooden spoon, gradually adding the remaining half cup of warm water as needed. The dough should be wet, sticky, and shaggy — do not be tempted to add more flour.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly oiled work surface. With oiled hands, fold the dough over itself for 2 to 3 minutes, gently stretching and tucking until it comes together into a smooth, slack ball.
- Place the dough back in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise at warm room temperature for 2 hours, until at least doubled in size and visibly bubbly.
- Pour the remaining olive oil (about 2 tablespoons) into the 13x9 inch baking pan and spread it across the bottom and up the sides with your fingertips.
- Tip the risen dough into the oiled pan. With oiled fingertips, gently stretch and press the dough to fill the pan in an even layer about three-quarters of an inch thick. If the dough resists, let it rest 10 minutes and try again.
- Cover loosely with a damp cloth and let the dough proof in the pan for 1 hour, until pillowy and puffed.
- Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 475 F.
- Make the salamoia: in a small bowl, whisk together one quarter cup warm water, one quarter cup extra virgin olive oil, and 1 teaspoon fine sea salt until cloudy and emulsified.
- Press deep dimples all over the surface of the dough using the pads of your fingertips. Go almost down to the bottom of the pan, leaving a craggy field of holes about 1 inch apart.
- Pour the salamoia evenly over the entire surface, letting it pool and flood the dimples. Scatter the coarse sea salt across the top.
- Bake on the center rack for 22 to 25 minutes, until the top is deeply golden, the edges are crisp and pulling away from the pan, and the surface is glossy with oil.
- Lift the focaccia out of the pan onto a wire rack so the bottom does not steam. Let it rest 10 minutes, then cut into squares with a serrated knife and serve warm.