Farinata
A Genoese pancake with three ingredients: chickpea flour, water and olive oil. There is no yeast, no egg and no gluten — and yet farinata comes out crisp at the edges and creamy in the middle. The secret is time: the batter must rest four hours, so the flour hydrates fully and a foam gathers on the surface to be skimmed off. The rest is a very hot oven and plenty of oil.
Your own work in that: 5 min.
- Batter 10 min
- Resting 240 min
- Baking 60 min
- Serving 5 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneWhisk the flour into the water without lumps
Add the flour to the lukewarm water gradually, whisking for about 3 minutes, until you have a liquid batter the consistency of single cream. The reverse order — water into flour — gives lumps that are hard to break up.
Ingredients: 250 g chickpea flour · 750 ml water · 1½ tsp salt · 60 ml olive oil
Rest the batter four hours
Cover and leave at room temperature for 4 hours, ideally overnight. Chickpea flour needs time to absorb water; used immediately the batter gives a pancake that tastes raw and gritty.
Ingredients: 250 g chickpea flour · 750 ml water · 1½ tsp salt · 60 ml olive oil
Four hours — a foam gathers on the surface.Skim off the foam
Spoon off the foam that has gathered on top and discard it. This is the traditional Ligurian way — the foam can leave a slightly bitter note, and without it the top bakes more evenly.
Ingredients: 250 g chickpea flour · 750 ml water · 1½ tsp salt · 60 ml olive oil
Skim the foam and discard it.Stir in the salt and oil
Stir in the salt and 60 ml of olive oil straight into the batter. Oil in the batter, not only in the pan, is what gives farinata its creamy interior — without it the result is as dry as a crepe.
Ingredients: 250 g chickpea flour · 750 ml water · 1½ tsp salt · 60 ml olive oil
Heat the pan with plenty of oil
The batter makes three pancakes in a 28–30 cm pan — you bake them one after another. Pour 20 ml of oil (a third) into a cast iron pan and put it into an oven heated to 250°C for 10 minutes. The oil must be hot, almost smoking — batter poured onto cold fat sticks and never crisps at the edges.
Ingredients: 60 ml olive oil · 2 tbsp rosemary · 1 tsp black pepper · 1 pcs onion
Pour a thin layer of batter
Stir the batter, take out the pan (with oven gloves) and pour in about a third of the batter — a layer about 5 mm deep, stirring it carefully into the oil. Scatter with some of the rosemary (and the thinly sliced onion, if using). Thinner and it dries to a cracker, thicker and the centre stays raw.
Ingredients: 60 ml olive oil · 2 tbsp rosemary · 1 tsp black pepper · 1 pcs onion
Five millimetres onto hot oil — you will hear it hiss.Bake at maximum heat
Bake each pancake for about 15 minutes at 250°C, until the top is golden and the edges dark and lifting from the pan. For the next batches, pour another 20 ml of oil into the hot pan, return it to the oven for 2–3 minutes, pour in the batter and bake the same way — three pancakes take about 50 minutes. High heat is a condition here — at 200°C farinata dries out before it browns.
Ingredients: 60 ml olive oil · 2 tbsp rosemary · 1 tsp black pepper · 1 pcs onion
Serve hot with pepper
Cut each pancake into wedges and serve immediately, dusted with coarsely ground pepper. Farinata is best hot — as it cools it turns rubbery and loses its crispness.
Ingredients: 60 ml olive oil · 2 tbsp rosemary · 1 tsp black pepper · 1 pcs onion
Before you start
The same thing under three names
In Nice it is socca, in Tuscany cecina, in Liguria farinata — the same pancake with local details. Niçoise socca is thinner and more charred, Tuscan cecina thicker and softer in the middle.
Toppings
Classically: very thinly sliced onion laid on the batter before baking, or sprigs of rosemary. In Liguria you also find versions with, for example, artichokes or bianchetti — tiny whitebait. Do not overload it — the pancake is thin and loses structure fast.
Naturally gluten free
Chickpea flour contains no gluten and the recipe needs no substitutions. One of the few classic European bakes that is gluten free by origin rather than by adaptation (if you are cooking for someone with coeliac disease, check the flour is labelled gluten free).
