More than a bread side dish
Focaccia sits between pizza and bread: flat, drenched in olive oil, often with nothing but coarse salt and rosemary. In Genoa, its stronghold, people speak of “fugazza” with respect.
The name comes from the Latin “focus”, for fire – hearth bread, then, baked in the hot oven. It fits that the oldest form of Italian bread is related to the fire that still blazes in the ovens of bakeries today.