house focaccia.

a manteca staple.

In our opinion, there is no more a joyful way to begin a meal than by swooshing a piece of light, fluffy bread through smooth ricotta, or plying it with salty salumi and sharp olive oil. it is our A non-negotiable, really.

as with most of our food at manteca we take Italy as our starting point. SO, with our focaccia, we start with a biga - a pre-ferment made using a very small amount of fresh yeast and equal flour and water. We then use a mix of wildfarmed white and wholewheat flour and a lot of olive oil and water. the result is a high-hydration, light and airy bread with a crispy exterior and soft inner dough.

The process is a three day one. starting with the biga being mixed the night before mixing the dough. the biga starter is added to wildfarmed flour and water, then left to bulk ferment with a mix of stretching and folding the dough. when the dough is ready, it is divided and shaped into loaves and then cold proved for 24 hours in the fridge.

before baking each loaf is covered in lots of olive oil, maldon sea salt and pressed with dimples then fired in the oven at a high heat for 45 minutes.

and voila. you’ve got a focaccia.

We believe that bread is only ever as good as the flour used to make it. We have long favoured the product of Wildfarmed, a regenerative farming programme that focuses on improving soil diversity to strengthen the wheat produced on British soils. Founded by Andy Cato, Edd Lees and George Lamb in 2018, it is now a nation-wide, farming programme that is slowly but surely shifting the way we think about farming and the food we eat.

Regenerative farming simply means farming with nature – using livestock to fertilise, symbiotic plant varietals to foster healthy ecosystems, and an intentional move away from pesticides and chemicals in order to yield a purer crop that is better for the soil, the air, the dependent ecosystem, and us. it is effort that is the secret ingredient to our housemade focaccia.