Who doesn’t love focaccia? A leavened flat bread with seemingly unlimited variations, everyone can find a favorite. This version, topped with squash or pumpkin and sage is perfect for an autumn dinner, or to bring a bit of Italy to your Thanksgiving table. This season as we visited Vicenza on a couple of our custom Italy tours we made focaccia with a true Italian chef, our good friend Lucas Migliorelli. Prep took 10 minutes max, two hours to rise, then bake and we had ourselves a real treat, focaccia fresh from the oven.

Today focaccia is found throughout the Italian peninsula, but it is primarily associated with Ligurian cuisine, as the olive oil in the bread helps keep it from spoiling quickly in the salt air and humidity of this coastal region. As we enjoy a walking tour in Cinque Terre, we visit many small towns that dot the coast of Liguria, each isolated and each with their own variation this flat bread. Focaccia Genovese is the most common, topped simply with a mixture of olive oil and water, and salt. It is enjoyed throughout the day, for breakfast with your cappuccino, as an afternoon snack, or in the dinner bread basket.

In Italy, “zucca” refers to pumpkin, as well as several different winter squashes with pumpkin-like consistency. Butternut would work well, here I used delicata squash which has the additional benefit of not needing to be peeled!

Focaccia con Zucca e Salvia

1 package dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
1 tablespoon of sugar (optional)
1 cup of warm water
2 cups of bread flour
1/2 cup of olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
1 cup raw pumpkin or winter squash, chopped
12 leaves fresh sage

In a big bowl, dissolve the yeast and the sugar in the warm water. If you have not used your yeast recently, you may want to test it to make sure it is still active – to do this, dissolve it in just a couple of tanblespoons of the water and allow to sit for 10 minutes or so. If it is bubbling a bit at the end of the 10 minutes, add the rest of the water and continue. If not bubbling, you need new yeast!

Add 1 1/2 cups of the flour and 1 tablespoon of the salt into the bowl, and with a strong wood spoon, mix the water into the flour. Continue to mix for about 1-2 minutes.

Add the other 1/2 cup of flour and mix to form a stiff dough. Knead the focaccia dough in the bowl for about 3 minutes, mixing very well. Add 1/3 cup of olive oil to the dough. Using your hands, squeeze the olive oil into the dough for about a minute. Any extra oil a the bottom of the bowl you will later pour on the top of the dough.

Make a ball with the dough, and put the dough in a sheet pan lined with a sheet of parchment paper. Spread the dough with your hands into rectangle, about 1/2 inch thick.

Using your fingers, make little indentations all over the dough – this is what they do in Genova! Evenly distribute the squash pieces across the top of the dough, followed by the sage leaves. Pour the rest of the olive oil on the top of this, the oil will pool and fill the small holes you made with your fingers. Cover with plastic wrap and let the focaccia rise for about two hours.

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Sprinkle with the remaining salt. Bake for about 30 – 40 minutes, until nicely golden brown. Keep your eye on the bread so it doesn’t over bake and turn into a rock. Enjoy!!