Cecina

Cecina belongs to a single chickpea-flour flatbread tradition shared along the Ligurian and northern Tyrrhenian coast, where the same batter baked in a hot oven goes by a different name in almost every town: farinata in Liguria, cecina or torta di ceci in Pisa and Livorno, calda calda in Carrara and Massa, fainè in Sardinia, and socca across the border around Nice. The exact origin is unrecorded, but chickpea flour was a cheap, keeping staple and farinata-type cakes are documented as basic sustenance for sailors and laborers by the late 13th century. A popular legend ties the dish to 1284, when Genoese ships returning from the Battle of Meloria against Pisa are said to have been caught in a storm that soaked sacks of chickpea flour with seawater, the paste then dried and baked into the first farinata; this is folklore, not record. The Livornese way of eating it, the 5 e 5 (cinque e cinque), is better documented: the name dates from the early-to-mid 20th century, from ordering five lire of bread and five of torta from the «tortai», the chickpea-cake bakers, the two combined into a filled roll.

Cut in a wide, thin wedge, two coins thick at most. The top is golden and faintly blistered, with a fine crackle where it set against the heat; underneath it stays soft, moist and almost custardy. The flavour is pure chickpea — nutty, earthy, savoury — carried by the fruity weight of olive oil and a good amount of salt. A heavy grind of black pepper is the classic finish. At its best it is eaten hot from the pan; the proper Livornese way is to fold a slab still warm into a soft bread roll, the 5 e 5, where crisp-edged, creamy flatbread meets plain soft bread.

Chickpea flour has no gluten, so the batter cannot trap gas and rise — it sets rather than leavens, which is why cecina must be poured thin. The batter is rested for hours first: this lets the starch fully hydrate for a smoother, more digestible cake, and lets the foam that rises from the chickpeas' saponins and proteins — natural surfactants that froth like the aquafaba of cooked chickpeas — be skimmed off the top. The pan is heavily oiled and the oven is very hot, around 250°C or more; in a thin layer the heat sets the chickpea starch into a soft, creamy interior almost at once, while the exposed top dries and browns through the Maillard reaction and caramelization into the golden, cracked crust. The crackle is simply the surface drying and shrinking faster than the moist interior below. Copper and tinned pans are favoured because the metal conducts heat fast and evenly, browning the underside quickly while the top finishes under the oven's roof.