Focaccia

Focaccia is a flat, dimpled Italian yeast bread baked in a well-oiled tray and finished with more olive oil and coarse salt, and the version the word usually means is the fügassa of Genoa: about two centimetres high, soft and open inside, crisp and glossy underneath, with pools of oil and brine caught in the fingertip dimples. Liguria treats it as a breakfast, eaten dunked in a cappuccino, and bakeries there sell it by weight through the morning in squares cut with scissors. Other regions make different things under the same name: Recco, down the coast, bakes an unleavened, paper-thin version filled with stracchino cheese, Bari makes a thicker, softer focaccia with cherry tomatoes and olives pressed into the top, and in Florence the schiacciata is thinner, saltier and tied to the olive harvest. The name comes from the Latin for hearth, and flatbreads cooked on embers under that name go back to Roman times, but the oiled, dimpled Genoese loaf is a product of the city's bakeries rather than antiquity.