Focaccine with white button mushrooms and taleggio cheese

Make them for an aperitivo with friends, add them to the bread basket for a festive meal, or stuff one with prosciutto for a quick lunch on the go.

Nov 01, 2021

∙ Paid

How do I choose which recipes to share in the subscription-based newsletter? I’m inspired by the season, by traditions, and mainly by what I crave in a specific moment. For example, the other day, I was craving focaccine, and here they are.

You might know focaccia, the typical Italian flatbread that changes according to regions and family habits: crunchy, soft, with coarse sea salt sprinkled on top, or with puddles of olive oil. Focaccina is a small focaccia, round and portable, something you are allowed to devour all by yourself. Their topping varies from cherry tomatoes to olives, from a simple drizzling of olive oil to more filling, seasonal ingredients.

Focaccine have a crisp, oily bottom and a soft crumb. You can enjoy them as they are, still hot from the oven, standing in your kitchen next to the stove with an unapologetic look, or you can bring them to the table along with a board of cheese and cold cuts. Everyone will grab a focaccina, cut that open, and stuff it with their favourite ingredients: maybe some prosciutto, a slice of smoked scamorza, and an idea of mustard.

The recipe I’m sharing today is with the cutest white button mushrooms - that we call champignon here in Italy - and some taleggio, a sticky, creamy cow cheese made in Taleggio Valley in the Lombardy mountains.

A direct or indirect method of baking?

If I usually make my weekly bread loaf with sourdough starter, when it comes to playing with pizza and focaccia, I am an advocate of active dry yeast, as I can better control the result in a house that can be very hot in the summer and extremely cold in the winter - hello beautiful century-old farmhouse!

When I started baking, I would use outrageous quantities of yeast and opt for a short, direct method: you put all the ingredients together, and in a couple of hours, you can bake your bread or focaccia. Now, I learnt to appreciate the role of time and an indirect method of baking. Use just a tiny fraction of yeast - we are speaking of about 1/4 or 1/8 of a teaspoon - and make a pre-fermented dough. Leave it to rise and mature overnight, then knead in the other ingredients, and eventually let it rise again.

If you opt for the indirect method, you make a pre-fermented dough known as biga (where the water is 50% of the flour), or a pre-fermented dough known as poolish (with a ratio flour:water of 1:1).

In the first case, you would activate the acetic fermentation with a low-hydrated dough (biga), while with a high-hydrated dough (poolish), you would favour a lactic fermentation. Traditionally, biga is used to make the Italian ciabatta bread and poolish to make the French baguette. I use poolish to make pizza and focaccia.

So, what is the advantage of using the indirect method?

You have a more digestible and durable product with different layers of flavour. It is not comparable to sourdough, but it is a good compromise.

In my book, this is a win-win situation.