Italian Ligurian Cheese Focaccia | Focaccia di Recco
Updated: Oct 24
Focaccia di Recco, two sheets of unleavened Ligurian dough stretched paper thin around molten crescenza cheese.
Focaccia di Recco is the one focaccia that contains no yeast at all, and everything that makes it extraordinary follows from that single fact. There is no rising, no proofing basket, no waiting for bubbles. There is only flour, water, olive oil and salt, worked into a dough so elastic that it can be pulled by hand until the light of the kitchen window shows straight through it. Two of those sheets are laid one over the other with fresh crescenza cheese scattered between them, and the whole thing goes into an oven hot enough to blister the top in a handful of minutes.
If you have made the tall, dimpled, olive oil soaked fugassa of Genoa, put that memory aside. This is the opposite discipline. The Genoese loaf is about fermentation, crumb and time. Focaccia di Recco is about tension, thinness and speed. The finished sheet is barely thicker than a sheet of good paper where the dough is bare, and it collapses under the tooth with a dry crackle before the warm, faintly sour cheese arrives behind it. Nothing about it is bready.
The pleasure of the dish is entirely a matter of contrast. Crisp against molten. Salt and green olive oil against the lactic sweetness of a young cow milk cheese. Blistered brown against pale ivory. Because the ingredient list holds five items and the bake lasts less than ten minutes, there is nothing to hide behind. A dough that has not rested enough will tear. A cheese that is too wet will steam the sheets soft. An oven that is merely hot rather than fierce will dry the focaccia into leather before it ever browns. Get those three things right and the rest takes care of itself.
Serves 4. Prep: 25 minutes. Rest: 1 hour. Bake: 8 minutes. Total: about 1 hour 35 minutes.
The Story
Recco sits on the Golfo Paradiso, on the stretch of coast between Genoa and Camogli where the mountains fall almost directly into the sea. The town tells its own origin story with a certain relish: during the Saracen raids of the early medieval centuries the coastal population fled uphill into the folds of the Apennines, carrying with them the only things worth carrying, which were flour, olive oil and whatever fresh cheese the household had made that week. With no time and no yeast, they mixed the flour with water, flattened it, wrapped the cheese inside and cooked it fast on a hot surface. Whether or not a single crusader ever tasted it, the legend explains the recipe perfectly, because every element of the dish is the product of haste.
The documented history is more recent and easier to verify. By the closing decades of the nineteenth century the focaccia col formaggio was a fixed feature of Recco life, sold by bakers and served in the trattorie along the shore. It was traditionally made for the eighth of September, the feast of the Madonna del Suffragio, when families in Recco baked it in quantity and shared it with anyone who came through the door. That single date is still the town's proudest food festival, and the association between the dish and the town is so complete that Recco has effectively built its restaurant economy on it. The wartime destruction of the town, which was bombed heavily because of its railway viaduct, did not interrupt the tradition; the bakeries reopened and the focaccia came back with them.
In 2015 the European Union granted Protected Geographical Indication status to Focaccia di Recco col Formaggio, and this is where the legal definition becomes useful to any cook. The production rules restrict authentic production to four municipalities: Recco, Sori, Camogli and Avegno. They forbid leavening of any kind. They require a fresh, soft, acid set cow milk cheese of the crescenza and stracchino family. They call for baking in tinned copper pans at a temperature that in practice never drops below 500°F (260°C), and they specify that the focaccia is sold and eaten at once, never held. The Consorzio that governs the name fought for years to get those conditions written down, precisely because a slightly thicker, slightly slower, slightly cooler version had been spreading up and down the coast and blurring the identity of the original.
What matters for the home cook is that the rules are not bureaucratic decoration. They are a written description of the only conditions under which this dish works. Unleavened dough is the reason it can be stretched to transparency. A soft acid set cheese is the reason the filling melts into pools instead of stringing like mozzarella. A ferocious oven is the reason the sheets crisp before the cheese can waterlog them. Follow the disciplinare in your own kitchen and you are not imitating Recco, you are simply doing the same physics.
Ingredients
Main Components
Italian 00 flour, 3 cups (360 g)
Cool water, about 1 cup (240 ml)
Extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g)
Crescenza or stracchino cheese, fresh and soft, 1.3 lb (600 g)
Additional Ingredients
Extra virgin olive oil for the pans and for finishing, about 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Coarse sea salt for the top, a generous pinch per focaccia
Oven, preheated to 500°F (260°C) or the highest setting your oven reaches
Baking stone or heavy metal tray, preheated at least 45 minutes
Optional Components
Ligurian taggiasca olive oil for the final drizzle, 1 tbsp (15 ml), for a softer and more almond scented finish
Fresh marjoram leaves, 1 tsp, scattered over the hot focaccia in the local Ligurian manner
Preparation: Base Components
Put the 3 cups (360 g) of 00 flour in a bowl with the 1 tsp (6 g) of fine sea salt and stir the salt through the dry flour so it never lands directly on a wet spot. Add the 2 tbsp (30 ml) of extra virgin olive oil and then pour in most of the 1 cup (240 ml) of cool water, holding back the last splash. Bring it together with your fingers until there is no loose flour left in the bowl, then judge the feel before adding the rest. The dough you want is noticeably softer than a pasta dough and slightly tacky to the palm, because a stiff dough will fight you at the stretching stage and a wet one will tear. Cool water rather than warm is deliberate. There is no yeast to wake up here, and cooler dough develops gluten more slowly and stays more extensible.
Turn it out and knead for 8 to 10 minutes. This is the only step in the entire recipe where you are working hard, and it is not optional. You are building the gluten network that will later be asked to stretch to something like fifteen times its resting area without a single hole. Push the dough away with the heel of your hand, fold it back, rotate a quarter turn, repeat. At the start it will be shaggy and will resist. By minute eight it should be smooth, faintly glossy from the olive oil, and springy enough that a poke fills back in slowly. If you tear off a walnut sized piece and stretch it between your fingers it should thin out to a translucent window before it splits.
Divide the dough into four equal pieces of about 6 oz (170 g) each, which gives you two focacce, each needing a bottom sheet and a top sheet. Roll each piece into a tight ball, brush the surfaces lightly with olive oil, and cover them with an inverted bowl or a sheet of plastic. Rest at room temperature for at least 1 hour and up to 3. This rest is where the gluten you just built relaxes again. Skip it and the dough will snap back every time you pull it, and you will end up with a thick, chewy base rather than a translucent one. While the dough rests, take the crescenza out of the refrigerator so it comes to cool room temperature and breaks into soft lumps rather than cold hard curds.
Preparation: Assembly
Start the oven at least 45 minutes before you plan to bake, set to 500°F (260°C) or whatever maximum your oven offers, with a baking stone or a heavy metal tray on the lowest rack. The traditional vessel is a shallow tinned copper pan about 14 inches (36 cm) across, and if you have one, oil it and use it, because copper transfers heat to the base of the focaccia faster than anything else in a domestic kitchen. A dark heavy steel pizza pan is the next best thing. Whatever you use, film it generously with olive oil; the oil under the dough is what fries the bottom sheet into crispness rather than merely baking it.
Take the first ball of dough and flatten it with your fingertips into a disc, then begin working it outward over the backs of your closed hands the way a pizzaiolo does, letting gravity do most of the pulling. Move your hands constantly so no one spot carries the weight. When the sheet is wide enough to overhang your fists, drape it over the oiled pan and continue teasing it outward from underneath, walking around the pan and pulling the edges over the rim. The target is a sheet you can genuinely see light through: hold the pan up toward the window and the dough should glow. A few near transparent patches are correct and even desirable. If a small hole opens, pinch it closed with oiled fingers and carry on.
Now the cheese. Break the 1.3 lb (600 g) of crescenza into pieces roughly the size of a walnut and drop them over the sheet at intervals of about 1.5 inches (4 cm), leaving a clear border of an inch (2.5 cm) all around the edge. Do not spread it. Do not smooth it into a continuous layer. Those gaps between the lumps are what let the two sheets of dough weld together during baking, and they are why a finished slice shows islands of molten cheese rather than a single wet stratum. Overfilling is the single most common way to ruin this dish, so resist the urge to add more.
Preparation: Finishing
Stretch the second ball of dough exactly as you did the first, to the same near transparency, and drape it over the cheese so it settles loosely rather than being pulled taut. Press around the border with your fingertips to seal the two sheets together, then run a rolling pin or the back of a knife along the rim of the pan to cut away the surplus. That trimmed edge should be a clean, thin, sealed lip. If you leave a thick collar of doubled dough it will stay pale and doughy while the centre browns.
Next comes the step that most home versions get wrong. Pinch up small peaks of the top sheet with your fingers, all over the surface, and tear each one open. You want roughly eight to twelve of these little rips, irregular in size and spacing, spread across the whole focaccia. They are steam vents. Without them the moisture rising off the melting cheese has nowhere to go, it lifts the top sheet into one enormous balloon, and the underside of that balloon stays soft and pale. With them, the steam escapes, the top sheet settles onto the cheese, and the torn edges curl up and colour into the dark crisp frills that are the visual signature of the real thing.
Drizzle 1 to 2 tbsp (15 to 30 ml) of extra virgin olive oil over the top, letting it run into the tears, and scatter a pinch of coarse sea salt across the surface. Slide the pan directly onto the preheated stone or tray and bake for 6 to 8 minutes, turning the pan once halfway through if your oven has hot spots. Watch it rather than the clock. It is ready when the flat areas are ivory to golden, the raised ridges and torn edges have gone deep brown in patches, the cheese is visibly bubbling in the openings, and the whole sheet has stopped looking wet. Lift a corner with a palette knife to confirm the base is crisp and freckled with brown before you pull it out.
Final Plating and Presentation
Focaccia di Recco is never plated in any refined sense, and trying to dress it up misses the point of the dish entirely. In Recco it comes out of the oven, gets slid onto a wooden board, is cut with a wheel cutter or a pair of scissors into rough squares and irregular wedges, and is eaten standing up with the fingers. That is the correct presentation and it is worth honouring. Cut it the moment it leaves the oven, because after 3 or 4 minutes the crispness begins to fade as internal steam softens the sheets from within.
Cut across the focaccia rather than radially, in strips about 3 inches (8 cm) wide, then across those strips to make rectangles. This gives every piece a share of both the pale crisp centre and the darker chewier rim. Serve on bare wood or on a folded sheet of parchment. Warm plates are unnecessary and in fact counterproductive, because a warm surface holds steam against the base and softens it. If you are serving it as part of a longer meal, give each guest one or two pieces and hold the rest in the pan; a second, freshly cut portion five minutes later is far better than a whole plateful cooling in front of them.
A very light final drizzle of a good Ligurian olive oil over the cut pieces is the only garnish that belongs here. If you want the local touch, a few fresh marjoram leaves torn over the top pick up the herb that grows all over the Ligurian hillsides and echoes the faint green bitterness of taggiasca oil. No basil, no oregano, no black pepper, no chilli. The dish has two flavours, dough and cheese, and everything you add competes with one of them. As an accompaniment, nothing more than a glass of cold Ligurian white and perhaps a few olives is required.
Professional Technique
The whole craft of this focaccia lives in one physical relationship: extensibility versus elasticity. Kneading builds elasticity, the springy resistance that makes dough snap back. Resting converts part of that elasticity into extensibility, the willingness to stretch and stay stretched. You need both in sequence, and in that order. A dough kneaded for 3 minutes will have no strength and will hole out under its own weight; a dough kneaded for 10 minutes and stretched immediately will retract faster than you can pull it. The 1 hour rest is the hinge between the two states. Professionals in Recco commonly rest their dough longer, up to several hours in a cool room, and it stretches like a dream because of it.
The second technical control is thermal. This focaccia is cooked by conduction from below far more than by radiant heat from above, which is why the disciplinare specifies a tinned copper pan and why an unpreheated aluminium sheet gives such disappointing results. Copper and heavy steel dump their stored heat into the oiled base within seconds of contact, setting and frying the bottom sheet before the cheese has time to release its water downward. That is the entire reason for the 45 minute preheat. If your oven tops out at 450°F (230°C), compensate by preheating the stone for a full hour, placing the pan on the lowest rack, and accepting a bake of 9 to 10 minutes rather than 6 to 8.
The third is a matter of hand skill and it simply takes practice. Stretch over the backs of your hands, never with fingertips, and never with a rolling pin beyond the first flattening. Fingertips concentrate pressure into points and punch holes; the broad flat surface of the back of the hand spreads the load. Keep the dough moving in a slow rotation so the same section is never bearing weight twice in a row. When you can lift a stretched sheet toward a window and read the shape of the frame through it without the dough tearing, you have arrived at the standard that the bakers of Recco consider merely acceptable.
Texture and Moisture Control
Every textural failure in this dish traces back to water, and the water comes from the cheese. Crescenza is roughly sixty percent moisture, and in an 8 minute bake a good part of that is released as steam. The recipe is built around getting that steam out of the way. The torn vents in the top sheet are the primary escape route. The gaps between the lumps of cheese are the secondary one, because they let the two sheets fuse into dry, crisp bridges that hold the structure together. A focaccia filled with a continuous smooth layer of cheese has neither, and it comes out of the oven flabby in the middle no matter how hot the oven was.
Cheese choice is a moisture decision as much as a flavour one. Crescenza and stracchino are acid set, high moisture, low elasticity cheeses: when heated they slump into a smooth molten pool and release their water quickly and evenly. Fresh mozzarella behaves completely differently. It is a pasta filata cheese, it strings rather than pools, and it holds a large amount of loosely bound water that floods out late in the bake, exactly when the dough has no more time to dry. If you genuinely cannot find crescenza, a mixture of full fat ricotta drained overnight with a little mascarpone comes closer than mozzarella ever will.
Temperature is the last lever. Speed is what protects texture here: the faster the dough dehydrates and sets, the less opportunity the released moisture has to soak into it. A hot oven produces a crisp sheet with a moist filling, while a moderate oven produces exactly the inverted result, a leathery sheet with a filling that has cooked dry. Once the focaccia is out, do not stack the pieces and never cover them. Trapped steam under a piled slice will soften a perfect base within 2 minutes. Lay the cut pieces in a single layer with air underneath and serve them straight away.
Professional Mise en Place
Because the bake is measured in minutes and the eating window is measured in minutes as well, everything in this recipe has to be ready before the first sheet touches the pan. Service planning here is not about cooking in advance, it is about staging so that the moment of assembly runs without a pause.
Equipment and Tools
Tinned copper focaccia pan, 14 inches (36 cm), or a heavy dark steel pizza pan of the same size
Baking stone or heavy steel plate for the lowest oven rack
Large wooden board for cutting and serving
Pizza wheel or kitchen scissors, sharper and faster than a knife on a thin crisp sheet
Palette knife for lifting a corner to check the base
Digital scale, since the four dough balls should be within a few grams of each other
Oven thermometer, because most domestic ovens read 25°F (14°C) higher than they actually run
Advance Preparation Steps
Knead and divide the dough up to 3 hours ahead and keep the oiled balls covered at cool room temperature
For a longer lead, refrigerate the balls up to 24 hours and bring them back to room temperature for a full hour before stretching, or they will refuse to extend
Break the crescenza into walnut sized pieces and hold it at cool room temperature, not cold from the refrigerator
Oil both pans and set out the finishing oil and the coarse salt within arm's reach of the oven
Start the oven and the stone 45 minutes ahead, and verify the temperature with a thermometer rather than trusting the dial
Serving Setup
Have the wooden board and the cutter beside the oven before the focaccia goes in, not after
Chill the white wine to 46 to 50°F (8 to 10°C) in advance so nothing delays the first slice
Bake and serve one focaccia at a time, keeping the second assembled and waiting rather than baking both together
Cut immediately on removal, in a single layer, and carry it to the table within a minute
Chef Tips
Judge the dough by the window test rather than by the clock: pull a small piece between your fingers, and if you can see the outline of your hand through it before it splits, the kneading is done.
Oil the pan more heavily than feels reasonable. That film of olive oil under the bottom sheet is doing the work of a fryer, and it is the difference between a crisp base and a merely baked one.
Tear the vents generously and irregularly. Neat little knife slits close up again in the heat; torn peaks stay open, curl and brown, and give the surface its characteristic ragged relief.
Weigh the cheese instead of eyeing it. At 1.3 lb (600 g) across two focacce the filling melts into distinct islands, and every extra handful pushes the result toward a wet, heavy centre.
If your oven has a top element or a broiler setting, run it for the last 60 seconds to darken the ridges, but stay at the door and watch, because a paper thin sheet goes from bronzed to burnt in fifteen seconds.
Common Mistakes
Adding yeast to the dough: this is by far the most frequent error, made by cooks who assume that anything called focaccia must be leavened. Yeast produces gas bubbles that create weak points in a sheet you intend to stretch to transparency, so the dough tears as you pull it and you compensate by leaving it thicker. The result is a small, sad, cheese filled bread rather than a Focaccia di Recco. The recipe uses flour, water, oil and salt only, and the IGP rules forbid leavening outright.
Stretching dough that has not rested: an under rested dough is all elasticity and no extensibility, so it retracts the moment you stop pulling and you end up fighting it around the pan. Give it a full hour minimum under cover at room temperature, and if it still resists, walk away for another twenty minutes rather than forcing it. A dough that has relaxed properly stretches almost by itself, and the difference in the finished crispness is dramatic.
Spreading the cheese into a continuous layer: it looks tidier on the raw sheet and it ruins the bake. A solid stratum of crescenza releases its moisture with nowhere to escape and prevents the two sheets of dough from welding to each other, so the focaccia has no internal structure and steams itself soft. Scatter walnut sized lumps with clear gaps between them and leave an inch (2.5 cm) border unfilled so the seal at the rim holds.
Baking below 480°F (250°C): a moderate oven dries the thin sheets long before it browns them, which is how people end up with a pale focaccia that eats like parchment. Heat and speed are what keep the dough crisp and the cheese molten at the same moment. Preheat a stone for 45 minutes, use the highest setting your oven offers, and if that still leaves you short, extend the bake by 2 minutes on the lowest rack rather than accepting a beige result.
Wine or Beverage Pairing
The pairing problem here is specific: a lot of warm dairy fat and salt, carried on a dry, oily, crisp sheet with almost no sweetness and no acidity of its own. What the dish wants is a wine with real cutting acidity and a saline finish that resets the palate between pieces, and enough aromatic presence to stand next to olive oil without being flattened by it. Liguria makes precisely those wines, which is no accident, since the vines grow on the same terraced slopes that look down on Recco.
Riviera Ligure di Ponente Pigato DOC: The classic answer and the one to reach for first. Pigato has a broader, waxier body than most coastal whites, with notes of ripe yellow peach, wild herbs and bitter almond on the close. That slightly resinous herbal edge sits perfectly against the green pepperiness of Ligurian olive oil, while the firm acid line scrubs the crescenza fat off the tongue. The faint bitterness in the finish also plays against the lactic sweetness of the cheese instead of doubling it.
Cinque Terre DOC: A blend built around Bosco with Albarola and Vermentino, grown on terraces cut into cliffs above the sea, and it tastes of that: dry, taut, mineral and distinctly saline. The salinity is the reason it works here, because it reads as seasoning rather than as fruit and it makes the salt on the focaccia crust taste intentional. Its light body is an advantage too, since a heavier wine would bury the delicate flavour of the dough itself.
Rossese di Dolceacqua DOC: For anyone who wants red with a cheese dish, this is the one Ligurian red that can do it. Rossese is pale, perfumed with rose petal, strawberry and crushed herb, and carries very fine, almost powdery tannin. Serve it cool at 57°F (14°C) and that light tannic grip cleans the fat without ever clashing with the dairy, which is exactly the trap that a more structured red would fall into with molten cheese.
Gavi DOCG: Just over the hills in southern Piedmont, and historically the white that Genoese merchants drank with everything from the sea and everything made of dough. Cortese gives green apple, lime zest and a chalky, almost stony finish with high natural acidity and modest alcohol. It is a scrubbing wine rather than a flavouring one, and against eight or ten warm cheesy pieces in a row that is precisely the service it performs.
Vermentino di Gallura DOCG: The same grape that Liguria grows, taken to its most concentrated expression on Sardinian granite. It brings more weight and a broader citrus and white flower aroma, with a signature bitter almond twist and a salty snap at the end. Choose it when your focaccia has come out unusually rich or when you have gone heavier on the finishing oil, because it has the body to match that without losing its freshness.
Alta Langa DOCG: A traditional method sparkling wine from Piedmont, aged on the lees, with fine persistent bubbles and notes of bread crust and hazelnut. Carbon dioxide is mechanically brilliant at lifting warm fat off the palate, and the toasted lees character finds a natural echo in the blistered brown ridges of the focaccia. This is the bottle for serving the dish as an aperitivo to a room full of people.
For a wine free table, a well chilled sparkling mineral water with a squeeze of lemon does the essential job of cutting the fat. A dry, unsweetened iced hibiscus infusion works even better, because its tartness stands in for wine acidity, and in Liguria a cold glass of freshly pressed lemonade with no added sugar is a perfectly ordinary companion to a mid morning slice.
Storage and Make Ahead Options
The honest answer is that Focaccia di Recco does not store. It is built to be eaten within minutes of leaving the oven, and every hour that passes takes something away from it. Plan to bake exactly as much as you intend to eat, and bake the second focaccia when the first one is finished rather than making both at once.
What does keep beautifully is the dough. Knead it, divide it, oil the four balls and refrigerate them in a covered container for up to 24 hours; the slow chill actually improves extensibility, and the dough stretches more willingly the next day. Bring the balls back to full room temperature for at least 1 hour before stretching, because cold dough tears. The dough can also be frozen for up to 1 month as individually wrapped oiled balls, thawed overnight in the refrigerator and then given the same hour at room temperature.
If you do have leftovers, wrap them loosely in parchment rather than plastic film, which traps steam and turns the crust to rubber, and refrigerate for no more than 1 day. To revive them, place the pieces directly on a preheated tray or stone at 480°F (250°C) for 3 to 4 minutes, until the base has crisped again and the cheese has just returned to a molten state. Never use a microwave, which softens the dough completely and makes the crescenza grainy, and do not freeze the baked focaccia, since the cheese separates on thawing and the dough loses its structure for good.
Nutrition Information
Values are per serving, based on 4 servings from two focacce made with the quantities above.
Calories: 615 kcal
Total Fat: 34 g
Saturated Fat: 17 g
Trans Fat: 0.6 g
Unsaturated Fat: 15 g
Cholesterol: 75 mg
Sodium: 890 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 52 g
Fiber: 2 g
Total Sugars: 4 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 24 g
Lactose: about 3 g
Calcium: 480 mg, roughly 37 percent of the daily reference intake, almost entirely from the crescenza
Phosphorus: 390 mg. Selenium: 28 mcg. Vitamin A: 310 mcg. Vitamin B12: 1.1 mcg. Riboflavin: 0.4 mg. Vitamin E: 3.2 mg from the olive oil
Allergens: contains wheat and gluten from the 00 flour, and milk in the form of a fresh cow milk cheese. The dish contains no eggs, no nuts, no soy and no fish. It is suitable for vegetarians only if the crescenza used is made with a microbial rather than an animal rennet, which varies by producer and should be checked on the label.
All figures are estimates. They will shift with the fat content of the particular crescenza you buy, with how heavily you oil the pan and the finished surface, and with the exact portion size you cut.
About the Recipe
This version follows the Consorzio rules as closely as a domestic kitchen allows: no leavening, a soft acid set cow milk cheese, two sheets stretched to transparency, and the hottest oven available. The quantities are scaled to a 14 inch (36 cm) pan, which is the largest that fits comfortably in most home ovens, and the bake time assumes a stone preheated for the full 45 minutes.
It sits in the Ligurian repertoire as street food and as celebration food at the same time, sold by the slice from bakery counters along the Golfo Paradiso all day long, and made in quantity for the eighth of September in Recco. On this site it is deliberately kept apart from the yeasted Genoese fugassa, because although the two share a name they share almost nothing else: one is a fermented bread, and this one is a sheet of pastry thin dough built around melted cheese and cooked in a matter of minutes.
Summary
Focaccia di Recco is a five ingredient dish that lives or dies on three decisions. Do not use yeast, because unleavened dough is the only kind that will stretch until you can see light through it. Do not spread the crescenza into a solid layer, because the gaps between the lumps are what let the two sheets fuse and what let the steam out. Do not compromise on oven heat, because at 500°F (260°C) the sheets crisp before the cheese can soak them, and at anything much lower they simply dry out.
Knead for 8 to 10 minutes to build strength, rest for at least an hour to trade that strength for stretch, and preheat a stone or a copper pan for 45 minutes so the base fries rather than bakes. Tear real vents in the top sheet, finish with olive oil and coarse salt, bake for 6 to 8 minutes and cut it the second it comes out. Serve it on bare wood with a cold glass of Pigato or Cinque Terre, and understand that the clock is running from the moment it leaves the oven. Eaten hot, it is one of the finest things Liguria has ever put on a table.
Comments