Sourdough Focaccia di Recco
At a dinner party the other day I learned about Focaccia di Recco. It is not Focaccia as we know it (but as we know by now, Italy is not one single country). It is a dish made of thin layers of dough piled one on top of another with cheese in the middle and more layers of dough on top of that. Kind of a melted cheese pie like thing. Think toasted cheese sandwich meets pie. Or a calzone but served in pie wedges. Think yummy.
Servings:2 Focaccia di Recco
Ingredients
For the dough:
- 600 g White 00 flour Or whatever
- 25 g Rye sourdough starter Or use 3 g instant yeast, 6 g dried yeast, 12 g fresh yeast and proof as necessary
- 7 g Salt
- 400 g Water
Instructions
Day ONe
- Refresh the sourdough starter in 300 g of flour and 300 grams of water.
Day Two
- Pour 100 g of water on the refreshed dough and mix it with your hands or a spoon until the dough is soft and milky.
- Add the rest of the ingredients and knead together for 10 minutes.
- Place the dough in a bowl and cover and let rise until doubled in bulk – about 2-4 hours depending on the heat in the kitchen.
- Take the dough out and divide into 12 equal pieces.
- Preheat the oven to 230 degrees C.
- Grease two pie plates.Roll each dough piece very very thinly and then gently stretch by hand until it is as thin as you can get it. Place three thin disks of dough each in the bottom of the two pie plates.
- Put in your filling (cheese, herbs and cheese, etc. Lots of filling is good).
- Roll out the other dough balls and place three thin disks of dough each on top of the fillings.
- Pinch the edges together and then trim off the excess with a knife so that the pie plate is clean all along the outside (like trimming a pie).
- Make large tears in the top of each pie, going sll the way through to the filling layer.
- Brush liberally with olive oil and then pop in the oven for 15-20 minutes. The top should be brown but not burnt!
- Let cool slightly so that the cheese has a chance to become a bit more solid.
- Cut and eat. Yum.
