5. For the topping: Put the 2 tablespoons of olive oil and all the sliced onion in a saute pan, turn the heat on to medium high, and cook the onion, stirring it frequently, until it is tender, but not too soft. It should still be slightly crunchy.
6. When the indicated rising time has elapsed, stretch out the dough in the baking pan, spreading it toward the edges so that it covers the entire pan to a depth of about ¼ inch. Cover with a damp towel and let the dough rise for 45 minutes.
7. At least 30 minutes before you are ready to bake, put the baking stone in the oven and preheat oven to 450°.
8. When the second rising time for the dough has elapsed, keeping the fingers of your hand stiff, poke the dough all over, making many little hollows with your fingertips. Beat the mixture of oil, water, and salt with a small whisk or a fork for a few minutes until you have obtained a fairly homogeneous emulsion, then pour it slowly over the dough, using a brush to spread it all the way out to the edges of the pan. You will find that the liquid will pool in the hollows made by your fingertips. Spread the cooked onion over the dough, and place the pan on the middle rack of the preheated oven. Check the focaccia after 15 minutes. If you find it is cooking faster on one side than another, turn the pan accordingly. Bake for another 7 to 8 minutes. Lift the focaccia out of the pan with spatulas, and transfer it to a cooling rack.
Serve focaccia warm or at room temperature that same day. It is preferable not to keep it longer, but if you must, it is better to freeze than to refrigerate. Reheat in a very hot oven for 10 to 12 minutes.
Food processor note The preceding 2 steps may be carried out in the food processor, but the hand method, aside from the physical satisfactions it provides, produces a focaccia with better texture.
Variation, Focaccia with Salt
From the ingredients for the preceding recipe for Focaccia with Onions, omit the onions and their cooking oil, and omit the salt in the mixture of oil and water. Follow all the other steps of the recipe. After brushing the dough with oil and water, sprinkle over it 1½ teaspoons coarse sea salt. Bake as directed in the basic recipe.
Variation, Focaccia with Fresh Rosemary
From the ingredients for the recipe for Focaccia with Onions, omit the onions and their cooking oil, and add several short sprigs of rosemary. Make the focaccia as directed in the basic recipe. When you check its progress in the oven after 15 minutes, spread over it the small sprigs of rosemary, and finish baking.
Variation, Focaccia with Fresh Sage
From the ingredients for the recipe for Focaccia with Onions, omit the onions and their cooking oil, and add 20 fresh sage leaves, chopped rather fine, and several whole leaves. When stretching out the dough in the pan prior to its second rising, as directed in the basic recipe, work the chopped sage into the dough, distributing it as uniformly as possible. Bake the focaccia as directed in the basic recipe. When you check its progress after 15 minutes, spread over it a thin scattering of fresh whole sage leaves, and finish the baking.
Variation, Focaccia with Black Greek Olives
From the ingredients for the recipe for Focaccia with Onions, omit the onions and their cooking oil, reduce the salt in the oil and water mixture to ½ teaspoon, and add 6 ounces black Greek olives. They should be the thin-skinned round ones that vary in color from dark brown to black. Do not use the purple, tapered Kalamata variety. Cut the olives all the way around their middle and loosen them from the pit, producing 2 detached halves from each olive. After you have poked hollows into the dough in the pan, as directed in the basic recipe, push the olives, cut side facing down, into the hollows, embedding them deeply into the dough, then brush the dough with the oil, water, and salt mixture. Bake the focaccia as directed in the basic recipe.
Crescentina—Bolognese Focaccia with Bacon
THERE IS a restaurant in Bologna whose tables, for nearly a century, have always been full. Their secret is solidly traditional cooking that satisfies that most solidly traditional of palates, the Bolognese. The restaurant is Diana, and the women in the kitchen there still roll out pasta by hand with the long Bolognese rolling pin, making incomparable tortellini, tagliatelle, and lasagne. While you wait for the tortellini, a waiter will put on your table a plate of thick mortadella cubes and sliced Parma ham, and squares of what is probably the most subtly savory of all focaccia, Bologna’s crescentina with bacon. The following recipe is adapted from Diana’s version. Here is an instance in which I prefer to use the food processor, because it does the best possible job of chopping the bacon and distributing it uniformly in the dough.
For 6 to 8 servings
¼ pound bacon, preferably choice quality slab bacon
1 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast
1¼ cups lukewarm water
3¼ cups unbleached flour
1¼ teaspoons salt
A tiny pinch sugar
Extra virgin olive oil for oiling a bowl and pan
A baking stone
A 9- by 13-inch rectangular baking pan, preferably black
A pastry brush
1 egg, lightly beaten
1. Cut the bacon into pieces without stripping away any of the fat, put it into the food processor, and chop very fine. Do not take it out of the processor bowl.
2. Dissolve the yeast, stirring it into ¼ cup lukewarm water. When completely dissolved, in 10 minutes or less, put it into the processor bowl together with 1 cup of the flour, ½ cup lukewarm water, the salt, and the sugar. Turn on processor. While the blade is running, gradually add the rest of the flour and the remaining ½ cup water. Stop the processor when the dough masses together into a lump.
3. Use about 1 tablespoon olive oil to film the inside of a large bowl. Put the dough into the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place in a warm, protected corner to rise until it doubles in bulk, about 3 hours or slightly more.
4. When the dough has doubled in bulk, put the baking stone in the oven and preheat oven to 400°.
5. Thinly oil the bottom of the baking pan. Put the risen dough in the center, and gently spread it out with your fingers toward the sides until it completely covers the pan. Be careful not to make any thin spots, or they will burn through when baked. Cover the pan with plastic wrap, and put in a warm, protected corner for 30 to 40 minutes, until the dough rises some more.
6. Use a razor blade to cut a broad diamond-shaped, cross-hatched pattern into the top of the dough, then brush it with beaten egg. Don’t attempt to use all the egg. Place the pan on the preheated baking stone, and bake for 30 minutes, until the dough becomes colored a deep gold on top. Take out the pan and turn off the oven, but leave its door closed. Loosen the focaccia from the bottom of the pan with a long metal spatula, lift it out of the pan, and slide it onto the baking stone in the oven. Take the focaccia out after 5 minutes, and place on a cooling rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Pizza
THE RECIPES for pizza dough are beyond numbering. Although some formulas are certainly better than others, none may credibly claim to be the ultimate one. What matters is knowing what you are looking for. I like pizza that is neither too brittle and thin nor too thick and spongy, a firm, chewy pizza with crunch to its crust. The dough that has satisfied my expectations most consistently is the single-rising one given below. I have never succeeded in getting the texture I like from pizza baked in pans, so I prefer to do mine directly on a baking stone.
Basic Pizza Dough
For 2 round pizzas, about 12 inches wide, depending upon how thin you make them
1½ teaspoons active dry yeast
1 cup lukewarm water
3½ cups unbleached flour
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tablespoon for the dough, 1 teaspoon for the bowl, and some for the finished pizza
½ tablespoon salt
A baking stone
A baker’s peel (paddle)
Cornmeal
1. Dissolve the yeast completely in a large bowl by stirring it into ½ cup lukewarm water. When dissolved, in 10 minutes or les
s, add 1 cup flour and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon. Then, as you continue to stir, gradually add 1 tablespoon olive oil, ½ tablespoon salt, ¼ cup lukewarm water, and 1 cup more flour. When putting in flour and water for the last time, hold back some of both and add only as much of either as you need to make the dough manageable, soft, but not too sticky.
2. Take the dough out of the bowl, and slap it down very hard against the work counter several times, until it is stretched out to a length of about 10 inches. Reach for the far end of the dough, fold it a short distance toward you, push it away with the heel of your palm, flexing your wrist, fold it, and push it away again, gradually rolling it up and bringing it close to you. Rotate the dough a one-quarter turn, pick it up and slap it down hard, repeating the entire previous operation. Give it another one-quarter turn in the same direction and repeat the procedure for about 10 minutes. Pat the kneaded dough into a round shape.
3. Film the inside of a clean bowl with 1 teaspoon olive oil, put in the dough, cover with plastic wrap, and put the bowl in a protected, warm corner. Let the dough rise until it has doubled in volume, about 3 hours. It can also sit a while longer.
4. At least 30 minutes before you are ready to bake, put the baking stone in the oven and preheat oven to 450°.
5. Sprinkle the baker’s peel generously with cornmeal. Take the risen dough out of the bowl and divide it in half. Unless both your peel and your baking stone can accommodate two pizzas at once, put one of the two halves back into the bowl and cover it while you roll out the other half. Put that half on the peel and flatten it as thin as you can, opening it out into a circular shape, using a rolling pin, but finishing the job with your fingers. Leave the rim somewhat higher than the rest. An alternate method—and the best way to thin the dough, if you can emulate it, is the pizza maker’s technique. First roll out the dough into a thick disk. Then stretch the dough by twirling it on both your upraised fists, bouncing it from time to time into the air to turn it. When it is the desired shape, put the circle of dough on the cornmeal-covered peel.
6. Put the topping of your choice on the dough, and slide it, jerking the peel sharply away, onto the preheated baking stone. Bake for 20 minutes or slightly more, until the dough becomes colored a light golden brown. As soon as it is done, drizzle lightly with olive oil. (While the first pizza is baking, follow the same procedure for thinning the remaining dough and topping it, slipping it into the oven when the first pizza is done.)
Food processor note The previous two steps may be carried out in the food processor. Bear in mind that the hand method produces better dough, that it doesn’t take appreciably longer than does using and cleaning the processor, and it can be more enjoyable.
Classic Pizza Toppings
PIZZA IS MADE for improvisation and brooks no dogmas about its toppings. Throughout Italy and the world, armies of pizzaioli—pizza bakers—each day are forming new combinations, conscripting mushrooms, onions, chili pepper, exotic vegetables and fruits, ham, sausages, cheeses, seafood, whatever seems to stray within their reach. Some ingredients are less congenial than others, however, and some, such as goat cheese, for example, produce flavor that is wholly incongruous when judged by Italian anticipations of taste. Without smothering spontaneity, it may be helpful, when one wants to make pizza in an idiomatic Italian style, to refer from time to time to those few blends of ingredients that represent, in the place where the dish was created, the broadest and longest-established consensus on what tastes best on pizza.
Margherita Topping: Tomatoes, Mozzarella, Basil, and Parmesan Cheese
Although some food historians, as historians are wont to do, dispute it, this most popular of all toppings is believed to have been created to please Italy’s Queen Margherita when she visited Naples, late in the nineteenth century. The colors, tomato red, mozzarella white, and basil green, are evidently the patriotic ones of the then still-new Italian flag. Incidentally, Margherita’s consort, Umberto I, seems to have been the only ruler among hundreds in the peninsula’s nearly three-thousand-year recorded history to have had his name graced by the suffix The Good. Without any reservations, one can attach it to the topping that bears the name of his queen.
Topping for 2 twelve-inch pizzas made with this dough
THE TOMATOES
1½ pounds fresh, ripe, firm plum tomatoes (see note below) OR 1½ cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, drained and cut up
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Note The authentic flavor of Naples’s pizza owes much to the very ripe, firm, fresh San Marzano plum tomatoes that go raw into the topping. In the brief season when local tomatoes of exceptional ripeness and firmness are available, omit the preliminary cooking procedure described in steps 1 and 2 below and use them as follows:
Skin the tomatoes raw with a swiveling-blade peeler, cut them into ½-inch-wide strips, discarding all seeds and any runny matter, and distribute them as they are over the pizza dough when you are ready to top it and bake it.
When working with tomatoes that do not quite meet that description, cook them down briefly, following the instructions that follow.
1. If using fresh tomatoes, wash them in cold water, skin them raw with a peeler, cut them into 4 pieces each, and discard all seeds and any runny matter. If using cut-up canned tomatoes, begin with the next step.
2. Put the tomatoes in a medium saute pan together with the olive oil, put a lid on the pan, and turn on the heat to medium. After 2 to 3 minutes, uncover the pan and cook for another 6 to 7 minutes, stirring frequently, until the tomatoes have lost all their watery liquid.
THE MOZZARELLA
½ pound mozzarella, preferably imported buffalo-milk mozzarella
OPTIONAL: depending on the mozzarella, 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
If you are using buffalo-milk mozzarella, which is very high in cream content, or a high-quality, moist, locally made fresh mozzarella, omit the olive oil, and slice the cheese as thin as you can.
If you are using commercial quality, supermarket mozzarella, grate it on the large holes of a grater, or with the shredding disk of the food processor. Put it into a bowl with the olive oil, mix thoroughly, and let steep for 1 hour before using it in the topping.
THE OTHER INGREDIENTS
Salt
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
14 fresh basil leaves
1. Applying the topping: If using this topping for 2 pizzas, divide all ingredients in two equal parts, and use one part, following the instructions below, to top the dough that is about to go into the oven.
2. Spread the tomatoes evenly over the top, sprinkle with a little salt, and drizzle with olive oil. Slide the dough in the oven and bake for 15 minutes.
3. Use 2 metal spatulas, one in each hand, to take the dough out of the oven, quickly top the tomato with mozzarella and grated Parmesan, in that order, then return to the oven.
4. In about 5 minutes, when the cheese has melted, take out the pizza, drizzle with a little olive oil, as described in Step 6 of the basic pizza recipe, and spread the basil leaves over it. Serve at once.
Variation with Oregano
Oregano so frequently takes the place of basil in a Margherita topping that its pungent and stirring fragrance has become identified with pizza itself. Use fresh oregano if possible, 1 teaspoon of it, or ½ teaspoon if dried. Sprinkle it on the partly baked pizza at the same time you add the mozzarella and grated Parmesan. Omit the basil.
Marinara Topping: Garlic, Tomatoes, and Olive Oil
Marinara means sailor style. It signifies cooked in the manner used aboard ship, therefore, “yes” to olive oil and garlic, but “no” to cheese, which would be incompatible with the fresh food most available at sea, fish. Marinara is the most traditional of all pizza toppings, and when the tomatoes are ripe and meaty, the garlic fresh and sweet, and the olive oil dense and fruity, it probably can’t be surpassed.
Topping
for 2 twelve-inch pizzas made with this dough
2 pounds fresh, ripe, firm plum tomatoes (see note) OR 3 cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, drained and cut up
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tablespoons for the tomatoes plus more for the pizza
Salt
6 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced very thin
Oregano, 1 teaspoon if fresh, ½ teaspoon if dried
1. Prepare the tomatoes, following the instructions in the Margherita topping recipe.
2. If using this topping for 2 pizzas, divide all ingredients in two equal parts, and use one part, following the instructions below, to top the dough that is about to go into the oven.
3. Spread the tomatoes evenly over the top, sprinkle with a little salt, add the sliced garlic, and drizzle generously with olive oil. Slide the dough into the oven and bake until done, as described. When you take out the pizza, drizzle with a little olive oil, and sprinkle the oregano over it. Serve at once.
Alla Romana Topping: Mozzarella, Anchovies, and Basil
Pizza topped in this manner, without tomatoes, is called pizza bianca, white pizza. In Naples it is further qualified as alla romana, Roman style, because of the anchovies, whereas, in the paradoxical Italian manner, in Rome and everywhere else in the country, it is called alla napoletana, Neapolitan style.
Topping for 2 twelve-inch pizzas made with this dough
1 pound mozzarella, preferably imported buffalo-milk mozzarella
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking Page 69