Pizza Caccia Nanza

Okay, so this is all kinds of belated. Well, actually I guess it's just the one kind, but still. Sorry to all my hypothetical devotees.

Anyway, last week we had a potluck at work, and I thought, "Hey, bread." But I didn't want a sandwich bread, or a sweet bread, and then flipping through I found this one.

It's not pizza. At all. It was actually a lot like focaccia. Apparently the name is Italian for "pizza that you take out before," because back in the day in Italy they'd make bread in a big communal oven but they'd take some dough and make a flat bread and take it out before the other bread because, you know, it'd cook faster. Which still doesn't explain the pizza part of the name but whatever.

The other reason I chose this recipe was because were were going out to a movie, and I wanted something that would be fast and easy, and this was. Except I screwed it up! Because it was all risen, but it was time to go, so I said, I'll put it in the fridge and bake it when I get back! Except when I got back I looked at the recipe again and it called for two rises, but I had to bake it right away before I went to bed, so instead of two rises I got one rise and cold dough going into the oven. And yet: it was still delicious! I can only imagine how tasty it will be when I don't screw it up.

There's less yeast than usual in this one, and no proofing, but it all worked out just great. Shoving little bits of rosemary and garlic into holes in the top was slightly labor intensive, but it gave it exactly the right amount of flavor and scent. And coating that puppy with oil before baking gave it a delicious golden flavorful crust that was a bit messy to touch but great to pick up. Baked it longer than recommended - maybe I didn't roll it thin enough. But mm, tasty. Folks at the potluck were very impressed. It was a great bread for a side-dish, especially cut up into attractive finger-food sizes. Would be nice for an Italian sandwich too. Nom!