In Genova Voltri they bake a focaccia thin, greasy and delicious loved by Fabrizio de Andrè, Gino Paoli, Tettamanzi and Renzo Piano. That’s why to get in line with 50 cents (and their recipe).

Queued to enter by Marinetta are elderly in slippers, ladies with shopping carts and distinguished gentlemen in suits that lengthen with a smile his hand to the cashier dropping a coin: “A 50 of focaccia”, and come out with a greaseproof paper package still warm and fragrant.
In Genova there is still something good that is bought with pennies, leaving the scent to the road and hopefully not turned ever in the boutique of bread so beloved in Milan.

Marinetta since 1946

A must for a trip to Genova is no doubt that in a bakery, to bite a slice (actually a strip) of focaccia greasy and wet, salty and crispy, soft and fragrant. The challenge of who does more good heats minds, but on one thing they all agree: we must go to Voltri. Here in one district of the beautiful Zena, since 1946, every morning at dawn opens the door the bakery Marinetta – a landmark in the field of focaccia alla Genovese. They make it classic, ie low and greased (without cheese! That is the focaccia of Recco!), with onion, or dry and always costs € 10 per kilo. Expensive? It is so light that fill a full bag with € 5 and an entire pan weighs about 800 grams per square meter of splendor.

A story in the feminine

Behind the counter, Emanuela Demarchi smile, she is the third generation of a line of women who have the focaccia in the blood. Journalist, with a history of known consultant and local reporter, has left everything a few years ago to take the reins of the family bakery from his mother, and to pass on, to her two daughters, the secret of the perfect focaccia. They survived three floods, two destroyed the workshop and one took away a piece of the family, and to give in to the vicissitudes of life she just did not feel like. She has armored everything with submarine doors and continues to churn, carrying on the family tradition. The name Marinetta this workshop it owes to the grandmother, the father Cesare is still there kneading, at eighty, and the mother serves as a censor in his visits to taste the product.
No need for communication strategies and communicated here for Marinetta because the focaccia speaks for itself, customers flock to the store and to make a testimonial there is a list of VIP that no one could ever engage in fee: Fabrizio de Andrè, Gino Paoli, the Renzo Piano study, but also the then Archbishop Tettamanzi, President Pertini and, they say, come here even the driver of Agnelli to bring in Torino the precious carbohydrate. Everyone remembers even a guy who lived in the United States and to bring home the focaccia had even bought a suitcase on purpose, to fill to the return. And I can say that slipped into a bag, transported by train to Milan, frozen and thawed in a pan, does not lose its magical flavor.

Recipe

To bake it is needed a high-temperature oven, and at home no one owns, but the recipe is not a secret and they tell it willingly, sure not to fear imitations. The version with onion, masterful, is digested very well. About onions? Very normal white new onions, they answer, but with half of spring onions, which make it more sweet. By eating without folding it to immediately feel the taste of onion.

For a baking pan of focaccia 100 * 70 cm (or two large as a baking sheet)

1 kg white flour 00
25 g salt
400 ml of water
1 hectogram of extra virgin olive oil
10 g of malt extract
50 g of yeast in loaf

Dissolve yeast in lukewarm, add the malt and then mix with the flour and let stand fifteen minutes. Pull the dough with a rolling pin and lay it into the pan. Let it rest for another fifteen minutes.
Sink your fingers to form the craters on the surface, sprinkle with salt, then let rise again for about an hour in a warm place, not windy and wet.
Mix the oil with 100 ml of water and distribute it on the surface of the cake, leaving it to stop in the craters made with the fingers.
Bake for 6 minutes at 290 °.

Source: lacucinaitaliana.it