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Sardenaira — Liguria's cheese-free anchovy and olive flatbread

A focaccia-like Ligurian tray bread with no cheese at all, and traditionally no tomato either — a genuinely different build from every other guide on this site, all of which use at least one of cheese or tomato sauce.

For Sardenaira in Domestic fan (convection) oven. One round or rectangular tray (approx. 30cm round or equivalent), cut into wedges or squares.

Dough spec

Flour
Type 00 flour
Hydration
70%
Salt
2.2%
Oil
7%

Scale this guide

Pan area
875 cm²
Dough (typical)
656 g
Range
525-788 g

Medium pan styles such as Grandma pizza or a standard sheet pizza.

This dough is sized to the pan, not a per-pizza ball weight — use the pan/tray dough calculator with your pan's dimensions and the medium_pan loading band for a different pan size. Open the full dough calculator for more control, or the fermentation schedule builder to work backwards from a target bake time using this guide’s room temperature long fermentation approach.

Related techniques

Stretch and fold

Steps

  1. MixHand or machine mix flour, water, salt, and oil to a soft, wet, extensible dough, similar in feel to a focaccia dough.
  2. Bulk fermentBulk ferment at room temperature for 2-4 hours, with a gentle fold partway through to build structure without knocking the dough back.
  3. ShapeTurn the dough out onto a well-oiled round or rectangular pan and dimple it out to the edges with oiled fingertips, focaccia-style, rather than stretching or rolling.
  4. Final proofLet the dimpled dough proof for a further 30-60 minutes in the pan before topping.
  5. TopScatter garlic, anchovies (or historically sardines), and olives directly over the dough — traditionalist versions stop here, with no tomato and no cheese at all.
  6. TopFinish with a scattering of oregano and a generous drizzle of olive oil.
  7. BakeBake at around 220-240C for 15-20 minutes, until deeply golden and the base is cooked through and crisp at the edges.
  8. RestCool briefly on a wire rack — sardenaira is traditionally served at room temperature, not straight from the oven.
  9. ServeCut into squares or wedges and serve at room temperature.

Bake notes

Under-oiling the pan is this guide's most common failure — the crisp, almost fried base this style depends on comes directly from a generously oiled pan, the same principle as focaccia.

This catalogue's own historical claim for sardenaira (its naming after admiral Andrea Doria, and its exact predating of tomato in the dish) is rated only supported_with_variation, reflecting genuine disagreement among Italian culinary sources about its precise origin story and its focaccia-versus-pizza classification. This guide's confidence rating instead reflects the dough and construction technique itself — dimpled focaccia-style shaping, no cheese, and traditionally no tomato — which is rated generally_accepted independent of the disputed origin narrative, the same pattern already used for Chicago deep-dish's guide, whose own 1943-origin claim is rated 'disputed' while its construction technique is not. Contemporary tomato-added versions exist and are common; this guide follows the traditionalist, tomato-free version as the more structurally distinctive build.

Generally accepted · Regional convention

Show sources and evidence