Liguria bakery tomato focaccia?

[mmarston]

I posted this is the Sicilian section, Grandma's Pizza, also but thought it should go here as Liguria calls it focaccia.

My rediscovery of Liguria bakery in San Francisco makes me want to try and replicate their tomato focaccia. It makes my mouth water just thinking about it.
I haven't had any for over 30 years but as I recall it was thick like a Sicilian but lighter with a somewhat crunchy bottom,  and had a smattering of thick and rich flavored tomato sauce on top.

I searched a bit on the web and found an interview with the baker that claimed the focaccia was baked at 800f!
http://www.northsidesf.com/jan09/fw_cookschat.html
I have not made this type of pizza before but I have never heard of a thick dough being cooked at this high a temperature.
The article also said that the recipe was a family secret.
Any suggestions for recipes to start with would be appreciated.

By the way "focaccia" is not in the spell checker.

Michael

[Pete-zza]

Michael,

Maybe Steve can tell us if there is a capability for adding new words to the spell checker, but there are a lot of culinary terms that are not now in the spell checker. For example, if you use the term "high-gluten", one of the choices given by the spell checker is "highfalutin".

Peter

[jeff v]

one of the choices given by the spell checker is "highfalutin".

Highfalutin-just like your pzza Peter!

[mmarston]

I didn't have time to work on this project over the past weekend but I'm going to try the focaccia recipe from American pie later this week. Reinhart mentions Liguria bakery in the book and claims his recipe is better.
I've yet to see any focaccia or Sicilian recipes that bake at the high temperatures mentioned in the article so I'll make this in my home oven following Reinhart's directions and see what happens.

The spell checker looks up focaccia and suggests fogyish (this is a word?), dogcatcher and my favorite, cowcatcher!
It doesn't like Liguria either.

Michael

[jeff v]

Michael,

I never noticed, but that recipe is different than the two he has in TBBA, so I'm interested to see your results. Do you have any thoughts on the tomato topping? In the vid you linked it seemed really thin like a canned tomato sauce.

Jeff

[mmarston]

Jeff,

As I recall from 30 years ago the sauce was thick but did not cover the entire surface. The vid looks different?
I'm going to try Reinhart's Marinara. I'll probably add some hand crushed tomatoes to the puree for a more interesting texture. I never tried it before and it's got a lot more seasoning than I use on my Neapolitans. For those I use drained canned plum tomatoes, crushed, sometimes mixed with 6 in 1's with small amounts of oregano, basil, black pepper and salt if necessary.

Michael

[jeff v]

Take a look at the vid again. It looks like they sprinkle green onions on, the pour the "sauce" right out of the can in a zig zag, then it spreads in the oven. http://www.openroad.tv/video.php?vid=347

[mmarston]

I think that is a can of S & W sauce but I can't tell what type. Some of theirs are seasoned (They don't sell out east anyway)

If you look at the one coming out of the oven the sauce doesn't spread too much.

Here's Reinhart's recipe for the dough and my conversion to bakers %.
Maybe someone could check my math.
I'm too lazy to type out all the mixing instructions but it is an overnight rise in the fridge and 2 hours on the counter before making.

12 x 17 inch pan

26 oz (100%) bread flour           
3.5 tsp (1%) kosher salt
2.25 tsp (.73%) IDY
2.5 cups (77%) of 40º water
.25 cups (6.8%) olive oil

When I put this into the dough calculator I get a TF of .232.
Does that seem reasonable?

EDIT: See reply 10 for correct %. Thanks Peter

[David]

It looks as the they use a horizontal mixer for the dough.

[mmarston]

The only product from S&W that looks like the vid is their Homestyle recipe Tomato sauce.

http://www.swfinefoods.com/products/tomatoes.html

[Pete-zza]

Michael,

Doing some basic conversions and using the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html, and assuming that you are using the Morton's Kosher salt and that one cup of water weighs 8.2 ounces, I get the following:

Flour (100%): Water (78.8461%): IDY (0.91947%): Morton's Kosher Salt (2.2792%): Olive Oil (7.326%): Total (189.37077%):

737.1 g  |  26 oz | 1.63 lbs 581.17 g  |  20.5 oz | 1.28 lbs 6.78 g | 0.24 oz | 0.01 lbs | 2.25 tsp | 0.75 tbsp 16.8 g | 0.59 oz | 0.04 lbs | 3.5 tsp | 1.17 tbsp 54 g | 1.9 oz | 0.12 lbs | 12 tsp | 4 tbsp 1395.85 g | 49.24 oz | 3.08 lbs | TF = N/A

Note: Assumes one cup of water weighs 8.2 oz.

From the above dough weight of 49.24 ounces (I used 49.236415), and with your 12" x 17" pan with a surface area of 204 sq. in., the thickness factor comes to 0.2413549.

If you plan on using the Diamond Crystal Kosher salt, then the dough formulation looks like this:

Flour (100%): Water (78.8461%): IDY (0.91947%): Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt (1.61443%): Olive Oil (7.326%): Total (188.706%):

737.1 g  |  26 oz | 1.63 lbs 581.17 g  |  20.5 oz | 1.28 lbs 6.78 g | 0.24 oz | 0.01 lbs | 2.25 tsp | 0.75 tbsp 11.9 g | 0.42 oz | 0.03 lbs | 3.5 tsp | 1.17 tbsp 54 g | 1.9 oz | 0.12 lbs | 12 tsp | 4 tbsp 1390.95 g | 49.06 oz | 3.07 lbs | TF = N/A

Note: Assumes one cup of water weighs 8.2 oz.

With the above dough formulation, the corresponding thickness factor = 0.2405077.

Peter

[mmarston]

Thanks again Peter,

My water calculation was off a bit. I also had slightly different weights for the salt, yeast and oil. I weighed these ingredients myself. Where did you get your volume to weight conversions from?
I'll note the correcttions in the earlier post.

Michael

[Pete-zza]

Michael,

I used 8.2 ounces for the water only because that seems to be about what a cup of water weighs when just eyeballing it. Technically, a cup of water weighs 8.345 ounces.

Peter

[mmarston]

I got the weight of water off the web as 8.345 lb per gallon.
I believe this works out to .52 lbs per cup which is somewhat less than 8.2 oz.

[Pete-zza]

Michael,

A gallon of water weighs 8.345 pounds. That is 16 x 8.345 = 133.52 ounces. There are 16 cups in a gallon. So, one cup weighs 133.52/16 = 8.345 ounces.

I was lazy. I got the 8.345 number from November's Mass-Volume Conversion Calculator at http://foodsim.toastguard.com/.

Peter

[mmarston]

My mistake was using 128 liquid oz per gallon for my calculations.
I'm still curious about the discrepancies in the other ingredients.

[Pete-zza]

I'm still curious about the discrepancies in the other ingredients.

Michael,

The conversion data I used for the other ingredients are those that are embedded into the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html. The conversion data for that tool (and the other tools as well) came from several places, including the nutritiondata.com website, weighings on my digital scales (including my MyWeigh 300Z scale) and product labels for those ingredients for which I could not find better data. Unfortunately I didn't record in my notes where all of the ingredient conversion data came from.

Peter

[mmarston]

I finally made this recipe.
The Rosemary, oil and salt side was much better than the tomato side. The sauce dried out too much during the long bake.
It was very good but rather bready. I'm looking for something lighter with more large bubbles in the crumb.
I may try a Sicilian style for the dough.

[scurran0314]

I lived two blocks from Liguria and I stopped by just about every other day.
I’ve duplicated their focaccia in a 475 degree oven.

[matermark]

I lived two blocks from Liguria and I stopped by just about every other day.
I’ve duplicated their focaccia in a 475 degree oven.

Great! Please post your recipe! Thanks.