If you love pizza, you’ll love focaccia col formaggio.
As we already explained, “focaccia” is the Italian word for a flat oven-baked bread, whose recipe can slightly vary from region to region.
In the small town of Recco, a municipality in the province of Genoa, they make a special focaccia, filled with stracchino cheese.
The peculiarity of focaccia col formaggio – whose name just mean “focaccia with cheese” – is that it’s made of two extra-thin layers of rolled dough, which contain cheese, so that the thickness of focaccia never exceed half centimetre (0.2 In).
Although traditionally cooked in wood ovens, focaccia col formaggio can be prepared at home, too, and tastes great as well.

Recipe for four persons

INGREDIENTS

½ kg wheat flour, type “00”
2-3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil + ½ cup for the baking trays
1 teaspoon salt
600 gr stracchino (also called “crescenza”) cheese
Cold water

DIRECTIONS

Pour 250 grams flour in a large bowl, add one tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt. Mix it roughly with your fingers and then add cold water a bit at a time, keeping on stirring and kneading quickly.
Dough must stay smooth, compact and elastic and must not stick to your fingers. If it sticks, you probably poured too much water. Try adding a small quantity of flour, but if too much flour is needed, better to start again and use that dough for a different recipe, because the result won’t be good.
It is important not to knead the dough too long and to use cold water.
Wrap the dough in a clean dishtowel and let it rest for one hour. It will rise a little.
Fifteen minutes later or so, do the same with the second half of the ingredients.

Then, preheat the oven at 250°C (about 480°F), take the first dough and split it in two.
Grease a 40 centimetre (16 In) large baking tray with extra-virgin olive oil.
Roll one half of the dough until it becomes so thin you can see through it: you’ll find that it’s pretty easy, because dough is surprinsigly elastic. Place this former layer on the baking tray and spread gross pieces of stracchino in it.
Roll the latter half of the dough as thin as the former and use it to cover stracchino. Fold the edges of your focaccia within the tray borders and make some small cuts on the surface of it, to allow hot air to get out during baking. Season with a small quantity of extra-virgin olive oil and salt.
Do the same with the remaining half of your ingredients.

Bake the former focaccia at the highest level of your oven for 10 minutes, then turn the grill function on and let it bake for 4 or 5 minutes more.

Cut it in four and enjoy it immediately. In the meantime, the latter focaccia col formaggio will be ready.

IMPORTANT NOTE

It is important to allow 15 minutes between the making of one focaccia dough and another, because the mixture looses its peculiar elasticity if left rising for more than 60-75 minutes, while it doesn’t gain it in a shorter time.
A lot also depends on the room temperature and humidity, so don’t loose heart if your first focaccia col formaggio is not perfect or so easy to roll, you’ll become more skilled by practice.

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