Here in Genoa Voltri churns out thin, greasy and delicious focaccia loved by Fabrizio de Andrè, Gino Paoli, Tettamanzi and Renzo Piano. Here's why get in line with 50 cents (and their recipe)
Old people in slippers enter the queue at Marinetta, ladies with shopping trolleys and distinguished gentlemen in suits with a smile and reach out with a smile to drop a coin: "A 50 of focaccia", and leave with a still warm package and perfumed with wax paper.
In Genoa there is still something good that can be bought with a few cents, that leaves the trail in the street and that hopefully never turns into those beloved bread boutiques in Milan.
Marinetta since 1946
An obligatory stop on a trip to Genoa is undoubtedly the one in a bakery, to bite into a slice (or rather a strip) of greasy and moist, salty and crunchy focaccia, soft and fragrant. The defiance of those who do it better excites the spirits, but they all agree on one thing: you have to go to Voltri. Here in one of the neighborhoods of the beautiful Zena, since 1946, the Marinetta bakery opens its doors every morning at dawn, a point of reference in the field of Genoese focaccia. They do it classical, that is, low and greasy (without cheese, because euella is Recco's focaccia), with onion or shoal and it always costs € 10 per kilo. Dear? It is so light that with € 5 you can fill a whole bag and a whole pan weighs about 800 g for a square meter of splendor.
A feminine story
Behind the counter, Emanuela Demarchi smiles, she who is the third generation of a line of women who has focaccia in the blood. Journalist, with a past as a well-known local consultant and reporter, he left everything a few years ago to take the reins of the family bakery from his mother and pass on the secret of the perfect focaccia to his two daughters. Three floods survived, two destroyed the premises and one also took away a piece of the family, and to give it over to the vicissitudes of life just did not want it. She has armored everything with submarine doors and continues to churn out, carrying on the family tradition. The name Marinetta this shop owes it to the grandmother, the father Cesare is still there kneading, at eighty years old and the mother acts as censor in his visits to taste the product.
No communication strategies are needed and communicated here by Marinetta because the focaccia speaks for itself, customers flock to the store and as a testimonial there is a list of VIPs that no one could ever hire for a fee: Gino Paoli, Renzo Piano's studio but also the then Archbishop Tettamanzi, the President Pertini, Fabrizio De André and, it is said, even Agnelli's driver came here to bring the precious carbohydrate to Turin. Everyone remembers a guy who lived in the United States and who even bought a suitcase to bring home the focaccia, to be filled on the return. And I can say that stuffed in a bag, transported by train to Milan, frozen and thawed in a pan, it does not lose its magical flavor.
Recipe
To produce it you need an oven at high temperatures, which nobody owns at home, but the recipe is not secret and they gladly tell it, sure they don't fear imitations.
There version with onion, masterful, he digests very well. Merit of the onions? Very normal new white onions, they respond, but with half of spring onions, which make everything sweeter. To be eaten without folding it into a sandwich to immediately feel the onion flavor.
Ingredients
For a 100 * 70 cm focaccia tray (or two as large as a baking sheet)
1 kg of white flour 00
25 g of salt
400 ml of water
1 hectogram of extra virgin olive oil
10 g of malt extract
50 g of brewer's yeast
Method
Dissolve the yeast in the warmed water, add the malt and then knead with the flour and leave to rest for a quarter of an hour. Pull the dough with a rolling pin and lay it in the pan. Let it rest for another quarter of an hour.
Sink your fingers to form craters on the surface, sprinkle with salt, then leave to rise again for about an hour, in a warm, non-windy and humid place.
Mix the oil with 100 ml of water and distribute it on the surface of the focaccia, leaving it to stop in the craters made with the diet.
Bake for 6 minutes at 290 °.
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