Ricotta and Taleggio Herbed Focaccia

This isn't your typical Focaccia. This delicacy is composed of two paper-thin layers of un-yeasted dough, and in between them a thin layer of flavorful, herbed cheese. Inspired by Chicago’s Avec Restaurant's incredible focaccia, I recreated this lower fat recipe at home, and it quickly became a favorite – both to make and to eat.

The traditional focaccia with cheese, typical of Recco, Italy, is made with crescenza cheese sandwiched between the dough layers. I use taleggio here.

You can improvise with any pan you have at home, but the half sheet pan, or a small round baking pan make closing off the edges easy.

Serve it with an arugula or a kale salad, and your guests will be licking their fingers.

INGREDIENTS

 For the dough:

• 3 cups (400 grams) bread flour (or up to a 50:50% mix of bread and whole wheat flour)

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 3/4 cup water

• 1/4 cup olive oil, plus more for greasing and drizzling

For the filling:

• ½ pound taleggio stracchino or crescenza cheese

• 2 cups ricotta cheese

• 4 tablespoons very finely chopped herbs such as parsley, cilantro, chives, tarragon

• salt and pepper to taste

• A dash of truffle oil (optional)

• a pinch of course salt

Preparation

• Place flour into the work bowl of a large stand mixer; add water, olive oil and salt. Mix with the dough hook on low speed until it forms an elastic, non-sticky ball, about 4 minutes. If you don’t have a mixer this can be done by hand

• Cover the dough ball with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for about 1 hour

• In the meantime, prepare the cheese filling: mix the ricotta with chopped herbs, pepper salt and truffle oil if using. Cut the taleggio cheese (or any other you’re using) into small cubes

• Lightly grease the quarter-sheet baking pan with 1 teaspoon olive oil; sprinkle with semolina flour. Dust a work surface lightly with flour

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C)

• Unwrap dough and divide into 4 balls

• Roll 1 ball of dough out to about 3/8 inch thickness, shaping it to the shape and size of your pan. Pick up dough with well-floured hands and gently stretch it, rotating as you go, until the dough is almost large enough to fit over the prepared sheet pan. Pull and stretch dough so it overlaps the edge of the pan by about 1/2 inch and fasten dough edges to sheet pan edges; dough will be thin and almost transparent
  Spread about half of the herbed cheese onto the stretched dough evenly. Sprinkle with the pieces of taleggio cheese. Roll out another piece of dough as before, stretching to fit over the first dough sheet and cheese. Stretch, pull, and seal dough as before so the cheese is enclosed between the two sheets of dough
  Roll a rolling pin over the edges of the pan to both seal the flatbread edges and cut the overlapping edges off, making sure the edges are fully sealed

• Pinch the upper layer of the dough to gently tear a small hole in the dough; repeat 2 or 3 more times to make a few tears in the top layer

• Drizzle flatbread lightly with 2 teaspoons olive oil and sprinkle with a pinch of coarse sea salt
  Bake in the preheated oven until flatbread is brown and a little blistered, 5 to 8 minutes. Repeat all these steps to make a second flatbread

• Drizzle flatbread truffle oil if you wish

• Cut and serve immediately

Enjoy,

Dr. Ayala