Focaccia

Focaccia is an olive-oil-rich flatbread dimpled by fingers and baked until golden, often finished with rosemary and coarse salt. It's Liguria's everyday bread — eaten plain, dipped, or split lengthwise for a sandwich — and it's built to be soft and oily inside a thin, crisp crust, never dense or dry.

What it actually is

A wet, well-hydrated dough of flour, water, yeast and salt is left to rise slowly, then pressed by hand into an oiled tray rather than shaped by rolling. Before baking, it's dimpled all over with fingertips — the dimples catch pools of olive oil and keep the crumb from baking flat and even. A generous second glug of oil goes over the top just before it goes in the oven, along with rosemary and coarse salt, and it's that final oiling that gives focaccia its shine and its distinctly rich, almost fried-tasting crust.

The dough is meant to be slack and sticky — a focaccia dough stiff enough to roll like a pizza base has been made wrong; it should barely hold its shape until it's pressed into the tray.

How it's served

• Cut into squares, straight from the tray.
• Plain, or split and filled, as a sandwich base for cured meat or cheese.
• At room temperature or slightly warm, rarely served hot from the oven.

Writing it on a menu

• Flag the gluten; the wheat dough carries it entirely.
• It's naturally vegan, worth flagging plainly since guests often assume any bread this rich contains dairy.
• Name the topping — rosemary and salt, olives, or cherry tomato — since focaccia varies more by topping than by dough.
• Say if it's made in-house that day; a fresh focaccia is noticeably softer than one baked the day before.