What, no potato?

No, and no garlic, no olives and no cheese filling. I bring up these specific items because depending on who you talk to, one or more of them is absolutely essential for an authentic focaccia. I’m sure I’m missing many others. However as I wrote yesterday, there are as many different “authentic” focaccia recipes as the are towns in northern Italy. Some of them add a few ounces of cooked potato (or potato flour) to the dough in place of some of the flour. Some sandwich a layer of cheese between to thin sheets of dough (a possible precursor to Chicago stuffed pizza?), some stud the unbaked dough with garlic cloves, others sprinkle on olives (which sounds more like a Provençal treatment to me). If any of those variations float your proverbial boat, by all means go for it. There’s no one way to do it.