Schiacciata con l’uva

Photographer: Adam

This office is full of passionate people – car enthusiasts, extreme mountain bikers, hunter/gatherers, rock-climbers, artists, musicians – but one passion most of us have in common is for good food. Simon, one of our senior engineers, has taken this passion further than most – travelling to Italy, Australia and around New Zealand indulging in cooking classes with his equally food-obsessed wife. Also an avid cook-book worm, he often brings in recipes he thinks we in the blog team may find interesting.

And so it was serendipitous that while we were planning our team trip into the wine country of Central Otago that Simon brought us in a slice of this Schicciata con l’uva to taste after he had tried his hand at making it over the weekend. Central Otago is well known for producing deep, rich Pinot Noirs, and it seemed an obvious choice to collect some of these grapes and give it a go ourselves.

Schiacciata con l’uva is a traditional bread made in Tuscany in the autumn. It is delicious flat bread topped with pinot wine grapes, and is delightfully rustic. Any pizza or focaccia-type dough can be used for the base, sweet or savoury. I used our focaccia dough recipe that we have blogged previously, kneading by hand this time which was a first for me – seems to be quite therapeutic! The link also has tips for making with a breadmaker.

Focaccia recipe

INGREDIENTS

Dough
1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
2 tbsp white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
2 1/2 cups bread (high grade) flour – plus a little more as required
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp flour

Topping
4 tbsp olive oil
500g of pinot noir grapes*, rinsed well and most stalks removed
4 tbsp white sugar

METHOD


1. Measure the yeast, warm water, sugar, salt and olive oil into a large bowl with half the flour and mix thoroughly. Cover with cling film and leave for at least fifteen minutes in a warm place.
2. Mix in the remaining flour, adding extra as needed, to make a soft dough.
3. Knead the dough for approximately ten minutes. It will get less sticky as you work and should form a soft ball which springs back when pressed gently.
4. Coat the dough in 1tbsp of oil and return to the bowl, cover with cling wrap and leave in a warm place for about an hour or until it has doubled in size.
5. Knead the dough for a minute in the bowl to reduce the size of any big air bubbles and lightly roll out the dough to fit a large baking tray (about 30 x 40cm) or two smaller ones. The trays need to have a small rim to contain the juice that will come from the grapes.
6. Lightly oil the tray and spread out the dough.
7. Spread out the grapes over the dough and sprinkle the sugar over.
8. Drizzle the olive oil over
9. Preheat the oven to 210 ºC on fan bake.
10. Leave to continue to rise for up to half an hour while the oven heats up.
11. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown.
12. Cool slightly before serving.
This is delicious on its own, but also fantastic with fresh ricotta on the side.
*If pinot grapes are unavailable, you can use other varieties of small, dark, juicy grapes. Just be sure they have an intense flavour — table grapes are too watery and not strong enough in flavour.