Driving through Wales last weekend, the sun blazing and grassy verges flanking narrow lanes with an irrepressible explosion of wild flowers that seemed to buff the car like a spring carwash, we kept noticing houses with a distinctive long, low shape. Arriving at our friends’ house, we found that it, too, was a single room deep and extremely long. “Did this style of house have a name?” I asked over a cup of tea and the best slice of jam-and-buttercream-filled Victoria sponge I’ve eaten since my granny passed away (recipe requested: it is from Annie Rigg). “Welsh long houses” was the satisfying reply, at which a book by Iorwerth Cyfeiliog Peate was put on the table.
House plans are the next best thing to having a nose-around and, even in a teatime chat about Welsh architecture, it is hard not to slip into potential buyer mode looking at them – assessing size, light and the best bedroom. Peate’s book – decades of work documenting this important part of Welsh history – is full of plans illustrating these houses, often with a stall for animals at one end (possibly a dairy) and the human living quarters at the other. As in life, my eyes end up on the kitchen, at the heart of which is always a large fireplace or hearth. In Welsh, the word for hearth is aelywyd, in Latin focus, which comes from the Italian fuoco (fire), the same root as the English word “focus”. Before ovens, bread was cooked on the hearth, the dough laid on the stone, maybe covered with hot ashes, and baked. In Italy, hearth bread was called panis foculis, which is the origin of the word “focaccia”, a yeasted dough cooked quickly.
Over time, focaccia has taken on different forms and, depending on where you are in Italy, it now means different things. In Liguria, it is about 2cm high with childlike dimples, glistening with olive oil and crystals of salt. Focaccia Pugliese is much deeper, often with tomatoes pressed into the cushion-like dough, which then bake into it like deeply set red buttons. Hearth breads are also the ancestors of pizza; the difference – usually – is that pizza has less yeast, which makes it flatter. But this is not the case in Rome: the pizza bianca of my local bakery is plumper than the flaky, cracker-like focaccia of a nearby pizzeria. Not that I am fussing about size or semantics – I am happy when either is brought to me hot from the oven, glistening with olive oil and strewn with salt that clings to lips and fingers.
For me, focaccia is inextricably linked to my teacher Carla Tomasi, because when she gives a lesson or makes you lunch, there is inevitably one baking in the oven when you arrive – a warm, yeasty welcome that seems to sum her up.
Her recipe makes a focaccia that is just the right point between tender and chewy. It calls for 200g ‘00’ flour, 200g strong bread flour, a teaspoon of fast-action dry yeast, a teaspoon of fine salt, a tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil and 300ml of tepid water mixed into a soft, slightly sticky and shaggy ball in a bowl, which is covered and left to rest for at least 15 minutes. You then turn the dough on to an oiled worktop and knead it gently for a few minutes before returning to the oiled bowl for an hour. By now, the dough should be as soft and pliable as warm putty, and ready to be pressed into a large bread tin – or two smaller ones. Then it is left to rest for another hour, before being given deep dimples with oily fingers and baked at 190C/375F/gas 5 for 25 minutes, or until puffed up and the colour of a polished cymbal. To finish, brush with more olive oil and sprinkle with salt and chopped rosemary, then serve while still warm. True, this all demands time, but not from the cook, as most of it is resting, which – because we know – is when good things happen.
