Focaccia pugliese, crispy bread with tomatoes for a bit of rouge, black olives for easy countering, oregano for highlights, and extra-virgin olive oil for the perfect gloss finish. Because we’re worth it.
A focaccia for every city
Focaccia is what I miss the most from Italy, after my family of course! You can find focaccia in any bakery, panetteria. Warm, oily, crusty. You can smell it from afar in the whole town. Focacce (plural) are piled up and proudly displayed at the counter straight out from the oven. A sight of heaven!
There are infinite types of focaccia depending on the city you are in and what the local produce is. I am biased and I think the queen of focaccia is the region Liguria, at the borders with France, they call it Fugassa there. The dough is lovingly hugged by water and oil. It is dressed in onions, pesto, stracchino cheese, or simply left as it is in its naked beauty.
Puglia with its ‘la fcazz’ offers great competition to Liguria with two secret ingredients: potatoes and semolina flour. The weird addition of potatoes in the dough, similarly to Irish bread, leaves the focaccia soft even the day after – although I don’t know anyone with enough willpower.
How to know you are eating proper focaccia
Unfortunately, it’s hard to find good authentic focaccia outside of Italy. They are often soggy, too oily if you are lucky, and always with way too many herbs.
Don’t get me wrong: you say bread, I say I love you. There is no type of bread I won’t be happy to eat. We are just talking about the real thing here.
I am impatiently waiting for the day focaccia will conquer other countries too.
How to know you are eating proper focaccia?
Keep only one thing in mind: think of focaccia as the happy marriage between pizza (thin and light) and bread (slightly fluffy and crusty). That should do.
How to make real focaccia
For an authentic flavour you need to follow two simple rules:
- Buy the best ingredients. As with any other Italian recipe, you need very few ingredients, but you need to make sure to go for the highest quality. Use ripe juicy cherry tomatoes and treat yourself with the best olives – even better if they come from Puglia – the region where this amazing focaccia comes from.
- Be careful with the size of your tray or oven dish.
As I said this type of focaccia needs to have a consistency between bread and pizza.
If you use a too small tray, your focaccia will be very thick. You don’t want something too crumbly as the oil and tomato will get lost in a bland bread taste.
If you use a too large tray, your focaccia will be too thin and crunchy like a pizza. You still want a soft base for the tomatoes and olives after all.
Carefully follow my recipe below, it is not a quick meal, but don’t forget, the wait is worth it.
When you can eat focaccia
All day long. All night long. I mean it. In Liguria you dip it in coffee to start the day like a queen/king. You can proudly display it at a picnic. You can savour it with a Spritz at your aperitivo. You can have it as a snack in religious silence or eat it quickly on the streets just out of the bakery. Ah, focaccia, how much I love you!
A focaccia to celebrate our 11 years together
There is one thing, someone, I might love a bit more than focaccia, just a little. Riccardo, the guy doing all the dishes behind this blog. Today is our 11th anniversary!! Eleven years of incredible adventures around the world. Eleven years that I am the luckiest person in the world.
I usually bake a cake as I have an incredible sweet tooth. This year, I decided to make an exception. I have been particularly painful and annoying this year (the number of dishes to wash has doubled since I started my beloved kitchen sofa!), so I thought to be generous for once. I needed a big extra thank you.
Riccardo is obsessed with focaccia, he has such fond memories of his local bakery, so I thought to gift him a delicious focaccia Pugliese for such a special day. Specifically, this is a focaccia Barese as the dough is the famous one from the Puglia region, and the condiments (olives, tomatoes, and oregano) are the pride of the city of Bari.
I experimented with this recipe quite a lot, tried different ratios of potatoes vs. semolina flour and I have now found the perfect balance.
This recipe makes for two focacce. That’s because I wanted to make the recipe as authentic as possible, plus the first focaccia will disappear so quickly that it’d be simply not fair not to have a second one to eat shortly after.
I am so happy to share this great recipe with you, this blog is all about sharing love after all. Happy anniversary to Riccardo and me, and happy focaccia to you all!
My recipe
Focaccia Pugliese
Course: Bread and pizzaDifficulty: Medium8
servings40
minutes20
minutes210
minutesFocaccia pugliese, crispy bread with tomatoes for a bit of rouge, black olives for easy countering, oregano for highlights, and extra virgin olive oil for the perfect gloss finish.
This recipe makes for two focacce. That’s because I wanted to make the recipe as authentic as possible, plus the first focaccia will disappear so quickly that it’d be simply not fair not to have a second one to eat shortly after.
Ingredients
200 g strong white flour
200 g fine semolina flour
1 tsp of sugar
150 g boiled and mashed potato
5 g dry yeast
250 ml water at room temperature
8 g salt
lots of extra-virgin olive oil
450 g cherry tomatoes
30 olives
Oregano
- Equipment
2×26 cm round cake tins
Method
- Peel and boil a potato for 5 – 10 minutes with a spoon of sea salt. Smash the potato when it is still hot in a big bowl.
- Add the strong white flour, semolina flour, sugar, 100 ml of water, and yeast in the stand mixer or a big bowl.
- Mix for 5 minutes with a stand mixer or 10 minutes by hand.
- Add salt, 2 spoons of oil, and the remaining water. Mix for 7 minutes at high speed. You are done when the bowl is clean, the dough is sticky but smooth with a few air bubbles.
- Divide the dough into two balls. Each should be around 350 g.
- Transfer the two balls to two round oven dishes smothered with extra-virgin olive oil.
- Cover up and let it rest for two to three hours.
- Now the best part (well, the best part besides eating the focaccia): pour lots of oil into your hands and use your fingertips to massage the dough. You’ll have lots of tiny hills.
- Add the tomatoes on top. Make sure to break them on top of the focaccia with your hands so you don’t lose any of the divine juice. Place the tomatoes with the skin facing the outside and the juicy part in contact with the dough. Don’t use a knife, but be careful when you split your tomatoes, I am always messy and my tomatoes went all over the kitchen – I’ll be cleaning for the rest of the week, sigh.
- Decorate with olives (I used 15 per focaccia), salt, and oregano if you like it.
- Let the focaccia rest for another 30 minutes – you can skip this step if you are really hungry.
- Bake in the oven at 250 °C for 20 minutes keeping a close eye.
- Be strong and wait for 30 minutes before eating. Your focaccia should now be crusty and 1.5 cm thin. Enjoy!
Recipe Video
Notes
- If your kitchen is too warm, use cold water instead of at room temperature. That should help to bring the dough together.
- For an authentic flavour you need to follow two simple rules: 1. Buy the best ingredients. As with any other Italian recipe, you need very few ingredients, but you need to make sure to go for the highest quality. Use ripe juicy cherry tomatoes and treat yourself with the best olives – even better if they come from Puglia – the region where this amazing focaccia comes from. 2. Be careful with the size of your tray or oven dish. As I said this type of focaccia needs to have a consistency between bread and pizza. If you use a too small tray, your focaccia will be very thick. You don’t want something too crumbly as the oil and tomato will get lost in a bland bread taste. If you use a too large tray, your focaccia will be too thin and crunchy like a pizza. You still want a soft base for the tomatoes and olives after all.
Next time you visit Italy, your first stop must be focaccia at the local bakery. In the meantime, let me know if you try this recipe in the comments! I can’t wait to hear what you think.
I cannot wait to try this recipe. I will be in quarantine for quite a few days and planning on cooking up an Italian storm with your recipes! <3
Hi – this turned out really well. I tried it with roasted marinated tomatoes, which added a lot of flavour. But you don’t tell the user when to incorporate the mashed potatoes into the mix. I added them with the flour, etc. in Step 2.
I’ve posted this recipe to my blog, North End Nosh (northendnosh.weebly.com). I highly recommend it!
Hi Harriet, so exciting that you tried this recipe. It must taste even more delicious with roasted marinated tomatoes, I’ll try your version as well 😊 thanks also for flagging, I’ll amend the instructions as potatoes need to be added together with the flour. I’ll also check out your blog. Have a lovely day!