Remove the dough from the fridge and, with your fingers, prod each circle of dough, starting from the centre and working out and around in a circle, then back to the middle again. Prick the tops with a fork, and add your tomatoes, sprinkled with a little sea salt, and the olives.
Slide on to your hot baking stone or baking tray in the oven and cook in batches for 7-10 minutes, depending on the thickness, until golden brown and shiny. Drizzle with a little bagna càôda and serve.
These are called after the patron saint of Crenna di Gallarate in Lombardia, where my cousins have their bakery, and where Federico, our restaurant baker, used to work. They make fantastic wafer-like canapés so thin they practically dissolve in your mouth, which we serve with drinks at the restaurant along with the pizzette – much better than any crisps. You need to make the dough 24 hours in advance and leave it in the fridge. We use strutto for this, which is pure pork fat – but a good alternative would be goose fat.
Makes around 20
1 tablespoon finely chopped onion
100g strutto or rendered goose fat
200g strong white bread flour (see page 140)
100g water at 20°C
a little olive oil
To finish:
a little extra-virgin olive oil
freshly grated Parmesan
salt and pepper
Put the onion and fat into a small pan and sauté gently for 10-15 minutes until the onions are soft. Leave to cool to room temperature.
Transfer to a large mixing bowl, add the flour and water, and mix until you have a sticky, greasy, soft dough. Form it into a rough square, about 3 fingers deep. Oil a deep container, put in your dough, put into the fridge and leave for 24 hours.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 220°C, gas 7 (or up to 250°C, gas 9, if possible). Cut the dough into 4 squares. Lightly oil a sheet of non-stick baking parchment. Put your first square of dough on top and rub the top with a little oil.
Roll out the dough until it is paper-thin, then transfer it, together with the baking parchment, on to a baking tray. Put in the oven for 6 minutes until golden, crisp and just singed at the edges (if you can get the oven as high as 250°C, this will take only 2-3 minutes). Repeat with the other 3 squares.
When the schiaccata come out of the oven, drizzle them with olive oil, season and top with the grated Parmesan – as much as you like. As they begin to cool, the schiaccata will crisp up, and they will stay crisp for hours.
This is Federico Turri’s fantastic foolproof focaccia, ready to bake in just over an hour. The dough is very soft, like a sponge, so that when you brush it with good extra-virgin olive oil, it absorbs it.
If you like, you can replace 50g of the quantity of flour with chestnut, chickpea or rice flour. Sometimes we roast the rice flour to give a darker colour and slightly more intense flavour. We just put it in a dry pan and heat it in an oven preheated to 200°C, gas 6, or in a frying pan on top of a hob until it colours: whether you let it turn golden or a darker brown is up to you, though obviously don’t let it burn.
Makes 1 loaf
500g strong white bread flour (see page 140 and above)
15g fresh yeast
225g water at 20°C
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for greasing
10g salt
For the salamoia:
65g water at 20°C
65g extra-virgin olive oil
25g salt
For the topping:
small handful of rosemary sprigs or handful of good pitted olives
To make the salamoia, whisk all the ingredients together so they emulsify and the colour changes to light green.
Preheat the oven to 220°C, gas 7. In a bowl, mix together all the ingredients (except the topping) until they form a dough. Rub the surface with a little oil and leave to rest for 10 minutes, covered with a damp cloth.
Oil a baking tray and transfer the dough to it, then rub a little more oil on the top of the dough (preferably spray on the oil, using a clean plant spray). Leave for another 10 minutes.
Using a rolling pin and starting at the centre of the dough, roll it very lightly upwards, once only, to the top of the dough. You need a light touch, so as not to break the bubbles in the dough. Go back to the centre of the dough and, this time, lightly roll downwards to the bottom of the dough, once only. Leave for 20 minutes, during which time the dough will double in size.
With your fingertips, make deep dimples in the dough, taking care not to go all the way through. Whisk the salamoia, then pour it over the surface and into all of the holes. Leave for 20 minutes more.
Either press the rosemary into the dough or push the olives into the holes. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden, then let cool on a wire rack.
This is the bread Dan Lepard developed for us using 10g malt extract and 150g of ‘biga’ (see page 153), and only half the amount of yeast shown in the classic recipe on page 148, which we mix with the rest of the ingredients to form the dough. Instead of leaving it to rest for 10 minutes, we leave it for an hour. Then, instead of rolling with a rolling pin, we dimple and fold it (see page 140) and leave it for 20 minutes, fold it again and leave it for another 20 minutes before pressing it out into a rectangle, making the dimples, oiling the surface or using a salamoia (see previous page), sprinkling with salt and pressing in sprigs of rosemary or olives as described on the previous page. Then we bake it in the same way.
We use focaccia dough to make garlic, aubergine, and sun-dried tomato and sage bread, or cabbage, potato and buckwheat bread (see overleaf for the recipes).
Make the dough as in the previous recipe, oil it and leave to rest for 20 minutes. Then turn the dough over, dimple it and spread the filling over two-thirds of the dough. Fold the short side, covered