From Anik’s Kitchen: Focaccia ripiena

A few weeks ago, Ngf and I had a focaccia for dinner that turned out a little dry. Not even the onion and cheese toping helped. In fact, the only thing that helped was the bottle of Nero d’Avola on the side.

But I really liked the onion and cheese topping, so I tried to come up with a focaccia that would be a little less on the dry side and decided – purists, please cover your eyes! – to fill it (of course, after the fact, I realized that many, many people and many, many food bloggers had already come up with the same idea). Voilà, problem solved – Ngf gave me official permission to add the recipe to the dinner collection.

As a filling, I chose a simple combination of seeded fresh tomato, mozzarella and herbs de provence.

The result: a focaccia that works perfectly well without a bottle of Nero d’Avola (it also works with it).

…

Focaccia ripiena

Ingredients (makes one focaccia as a light dinner for 2):

• a quarter cube (about 10g) of fresh yeast
• 250-300g flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 160ml water (lukewarm)
• 1 tbsp. olive oil (and another for the onions)
• 2 onions
• 100g feta cheese
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 small loaf of mozzarella (the standard 125g packs)
• herbs de provence

Instructions:

• Turn your oven on at 50°C for ten minutes.
• Crumble the yeast into a large bowl, add the flour and the salt and stir with a spoon until evenly blended.
• In a separate bowl, mix the oil and the water and add it to the flour/yeast mix. Blend with kneading pegs until you have a smooth, even dough.
• Turn off the oven, place the bowl in it and leave there for an hour. The volume should double.
• In a pan, heat the remaining spoonful of olive oil.
• Sauté the onions in the oil for a few minutes.
• Drain and dice the feta cheese.
• Drain the mozzarella and cut it into slice.
• Wash the tomatoes and cut them into slices. Remove the seeds (they can make the focaccia watery and teary)
• Is that hour over yet?
• If so, remove the bowl with the dough from the oven. Set oven to preheat at 220°C.
• Dose your hands and the worktop with flour, then proceed to roll out the dough to a rectangle, about 1cm thick.
• Onto one half of the rectangle, spread the seeded tomato and the mozzarella (leave a 2 cm rim on the sides!). Sprinkle generously with herbs de provence.
• Fold the free half over the half with the filling and carefully close the seams, making sure that there are no tears in the dough and that the filling stays inside.
• Top the focaccia with the onions and scatter the feta cheese over it.
• Bake at 220°C for about 30 minutes.
• Uncork that bottle of Nero d’Avola…

~ by Anik LaChev on July 1, 2009.