Focaccina Caprese d’oliva e Rucola

So I’ve been going straight back to my Italian roots… well the ones i made for myself that is. I have a very intense love of Italian food. The culture is so romantic and passionate and it really translates into the food. A really luxurious, fresh wonderful flair of seasonal homemade goodness. I was always taught that Italian never had to be pretentious and was really about the care, simplicity, and honesty the cuisine has to offer. Italians by nature are a very strong group of people bound by their intense love for everything they do. Four years of Italian cooking and I really do feel like my journey has only just begun. I love finding new ideas and wonderful new ways to integrate this beautiful culture into my life as well as the people I cook for.I took a little break from cooking Italian but i can never really get away from it, its become a big part of me. So I may not be the most Italian authority of food but i always try to do it the justice it deserves. Grazie

This Focaccina Caprese d’oliva e Rucola is something that I’ve always loved from the moment I laid my hands on it. Its an amazing vegetarian option that will have meat eaters not missing their meat but its also fantastic with thinly shaved Parma Prosciutto or Salame Toscano. Its a beautiful Cold Pizza flavored with fresh herbs, vivacious spicy arugula, fresh heirloom tomatoes, chopped pieces fresh basil leaves, and silky chunks of buffalo mozzarella. This Focaccina is a beautiful salad that lays on a light thin pieces of pizza dough that are herb encrusted.

For the dough you may use any pizza dough that you like. You want something that would be used for thin pizzas that you can stretch and get pretty see through. I’m still working on my dough recipe I will give you what i used which but i still think there can be a couple of improvements but over all i really loved this recipe.

4 cups of all purpose flour sifted
1 3/4 cups of warm water 100 degrees
1 envelope of dry active yeast
2 teaspoons of minced rosemary
2 teaspoons of minced sage
1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano
3 tablespoons of cold pressed extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt

Using a thermometer check temperature of water and add envelope of yeast to water dissolve and mix up with a spoon. Sift the flour into the bowl that attaches to the mixer add 1 teaspoon of rosemary and one of sage add to the flour add all the salt and the water yeast mixture.

Get your trusty stand mixer with a dough hook attachment ready to do the work for you but if your crazy or have a little extra aggression you can sit and hand kneed dough for 8-10 minutes. I like a medium approach to this were I let the mixer do about 6 minutes of the work and I’ll do about 4 and then if the dough is still not getting as elasticity as I would like which you can tell by stretching a small piece of dough and if you can see through it well without it breaking you got good dough. If you can’t and the dough is not as stretchy as you’d like kneed it some more or throw it back in the mixer.

Either way when the times about up need the dough into a ball and place it in a warm area in a bowl i covered it with plastic wrap and let it double about an hour to hour and a 1/2

lookin like this

and then punch down the dough and pour out to a lightly floured surface cut it into three similar sized pieces and then stretch the dough over the top and press it into the bottom, roll the dough around till it looks like a ball

this is the punched down dough

cut into three pieces

rolling into ball

this is the three dough balls

then put a dry towel over them
like this
and let it rise till it doubles again about 45 minutes

then they look like this

and you’re ready to make Pizza

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees

take the dough and spread it out with your fingers on a floured surface till its a small Frisbee size then with your knuckles put stretch the dough around till it becomes a large thin piece of pizza dough

place it on a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet. Over the top of the dough you want to run a fork over the surface to aerate the dough so it doesn’t bubble. Sprinkle over the top the remaining herbs, a little black pepper, and a 1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano. Then finally place the pizza in the oven. Bake the pizza about 10-12 minutes checking 1/2 way through and turning the sheet tray. At the end of the baking time the pizza was a little light so i put it in the broiler for about 45 seconds to crisp and brown the dough. take it out, let it cool and here we go.

For the topping of this pizza you’ll need

2 large handfuls Arugula pre washed and if wet dried in a paper towel well
1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese
1 and 1/2 balls of Buffalo mozzarella
1/2 cup of pitted green olives sliced
5 basil leaves chopped
1 large heirloom tomato or 2 hot house tomatoes
Salt
Pepper
Cold pressed olive oil

Combine everything in the bowl and season with salt and pepper to taste as well as olive oil as much as you’d like to coat leave a little of the Parmesan aside for garnish. I like to chop the buffalo mozzarella and put it on top just a small drizzle of oil and some back pepper and a little stream of this balsamic glaze that i made as well.

This gives a little nice touch

balsamic glaze.

1/2 cup white balsamic
1/2 cup light corn syrup

I used a one to one ratio of light corn syrup to balsamic and boil it till it coats the back of a spoon about 12-15 minutes, set it aside and let it cool

I saw white balsamic at the store which i thought would be nice but you can also use regular balsamic. We used to use tubs of balsamic glaze where i worked its a complimenting nice flavor.

1st use a pizza cutter to cut the pizza into slices
put on platter or place individual pieces of plate

Combine the ingredients, top with salad, drizzle some glaze, olive oil, and season

This is what you have.