Foccacia

Foccacia, a popular Italian bread, appears to stem from the Roman panis focacius. Thanks to the magical power of etymology and the relationship between Latin and Spanish, the first part can easily be attributed to bread. The latter, with the help of Google Translate, can be tied to the the Latin term focus, meaning hearth. Thus, the direct translation appears to be hearth bread. Bread-making was a vital piece of ancient Roman cuisine. Examples of preserved loaves (panis quadratus) have been excavated in the city of Pompeii:

 

Panis Quadratus - Wikimedia

More recently, news of a fresco depicting a "Roman pizza" has been making the rounds on the web. Although probably not really eaten as we would imagine a pizza, but rather used as an edible serving dish, it's an entertaining idea. I highly recommend the videos made by Max Miller of Tasting History on the subject, which I'll embed below, since it isn't the primary goal of this post. 

 

On the subject of foccacia - I got the recipe that as was written by Nicola Lamb of Kitchen Projects. I really enjoy reading her work since it contains detailed analyses of different approaches, including photographs comparing the effects of different possible approaches. Since I didn't have bread flour, I used all-purpose, which seems to have done a fair job, even if the gluten network wasn't as strong. I also found out that I only had half the needed flour after I already started the preferment, so I scaled everything except the poolish. Came out alright in terms of texture,but I forgot to add salt, making it rather bland.