Daring Bakers April: Focaccia di Recco
For the month of April Rachael of pizzarossa and Sawsan of Chef in Disguise took us on a trip to Italy. They challenged us to try our hands at making focaccia from scratch
I wasn't in the mood to work with yeast, but luckily, April and Sawsan included this recipe for focaccia di recco from Academia Barilla.
It's essentially a very thin pie filled with cheese. It's supposed to be filled with Crescenza or Stracchino cheese, but I couldn't find either, so I just used mozzarella.
After mixing the simple dough and letting it rest for an hour, you roll half of it into a very thin circle. I cut the recipe in half because I didn't want a giant focaccia, but either I rolled it too thinly or the biggest baking sheet I own was just barely big enough to contain it.
Huge!
Simple shredded mozz.
You roll the second half of the dough out and put it on top of everything. Then you undertake the comical challenge of pinching all the way around this giant round of dough a few times, in mortal fear that if you don't, cheese will leak out of some side hole and desecrate your already kinda freaky deaky oven floor. Then you just toss your hands up in the air and fold the outer edges in--desperate food origami. Then snip little holes into the top crust all over the place to vent the steam.
Paint olive oil over the top and sprinkle down some sea or kosher salt.
Laugh when your steam holes fail and your focaccia does its best Jiffy Pop impression.
Rest assured, it will retain maximum puffiness once you take it out of the oven. Long after you take it out of the oven. No worries--stamp it out with a clean dish towel as if it were on fire, and it will flatten out with only a minimum of saggy, deflated poofs here and there.
Pac-Man approves!
Notes:
This is a simple and easy recipe and comes together quickly, hour-long rest aside, and it would be fun to play with other fillings. This is a keeper!
Visit my fellow DBers' various focaccia, yeasted and unyeasted, with all types of toppings and fillings, by clicking through to our blogroll.
I wasn't in the mood to work with yeast, but luckily, April and Sawsan included this recipe for focaccia di recco from Academia Barilla.
It's essentially a very thin pie filled with cheese. It's supposed to be filled with Crescenza or Stracchino cheese, but I couldn't find either, so I just used mozzarella.
After mixing the simple dough and letting it rest for an hour, you roll half of it into a very thin circle. I cut the recipe in half because I didn't want a giant focaccia, but either I rolled it too thinly or the biggest baking sheet I own was just barely big enough to contain it.
Huge!
Simple shredded mozz.
You roll the second half of the dough out and put it on top of everything. Then you undertake the comical challenge of pinching all the way around this giant round of dough a few times, in mortal fear that if you don't, cheese will leak out of some side hole and desecrate your already kinda freaky deaky oven floor. Then you just toss your hands up in the air and fold the outer edges in--desperate food origami. Then snip little holes into the top crust all over the place to vent the steam.
Paint olive oil over the top and sprinkle down some sea or kosher salt.
Laugh when your steam holes fail and your focaccia does its best Jiffy Pop impression.
Rest assured, it will retain maximum puffiness once you take it out of the oven. Long after you take it out of the oven. No worries--stamp it out with a clean dish towel as if it were on fire, and it will flatten out with only a minimum of saggy, deflated poofs here and there.
Pac-Man approves!
Notes:
This is a simple and easy recipe and comes together quickly, hour-long rest aside, and it would be fun to play with other fillings. This is a keeper!
Visit my fellow DBers' various focaccia, yeasted and unyeasted, with all types of toppings and fillings, by clicking through to our blogroll.
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