Cecina: A Chickpea "Pizza" - Recipe #3

Here's yet another cecina recipe that I've just tried. In case you missed my first post in this series, "Cecina," also known as "farinata" and as "socca" in Provence, is a wheat-free flat-bread made with chickpea flour.

I actually made a modified version of the recipe that I found. Here's the original recipe, followed by my modifications. After the recipes are our thoughts on the results.

( The Original Cecina Recipe )

This is my modified version of the above recipe:

• 2 cups Garbanzo Flour
• 2 cups Water
• 2 tbsp Smoked Spanish Paprika
• 1 tbsp Onion Powder (or garlic powder)
• 1 tsp Tumeric
• 1 tbsp Kosher Salt
• Olive oil for cooking and taste.

Mix all ingredients [except the olive oil] and leave to sit for at least 4 hrs.

Preheat oven to 400 °F.

Take a rectangular pizza pan or nonstick sheet pan. (The one that I used was 10"x15".) Pour in a bit under 1 cup of olive oil, or enough just to cover the bottom of the pan. Pour in the batter, no more than a 1/4" thick. (Thinner is fine.) The oil will come up over the batter around the edges. Make sure that the batter is uniformly spread.

Bake about 30 min.

Finish by brushing with olive oil, tomato sauce, or whatever you'd like.

I finished this one by mixing together some locally-grown sage that I dried and rubbed, some powdered rosemary, some kosher salt, and olive oil. I brushed the mixture on half of the cecina, and left the other half unadorned.


This version of cecina looked much like the first one. It had a "cracked-earth" look to the surface. The bottom crisped up nicely on this one. Unlike the other two that I tried, I used our new nonstick half-sheet pan. The cecina pulled away from the edges, and from itself. Not the consistency I remember from when my father made it all of those years ago, but still decent.

The seasoning in the batter gave the cecina a much better flavor than the previous ones. I found the plain side and the seasoned one both quite tasty. It was drier than Recipe #2, but not very dry.

The tumeric was utterly unnecessary. I only added it to try to give the cecina more of a yellow color. It still came out red, due to the smoked paprika. Eh, I'll take a reddish cecina for the yummy smoked paprika.

One thing with these "drier" recipes is that you can use them as the base for something more focaccia-like or pizza-like. I would use a lightly seasoned version of the batter, bake it 2-5 minutes shorter than usual, remove it from the oven, then top it. Some carmelized onions should be very nice. Or brush-on tomato sauce and top with fresh basil leaf and very thinly-sliced mozzarella. Finish by broiling for those last 2-5 minutes of cooking.

epinoid's verdict? He liked it, but said that I put too much salt on it, specifically on the seasoned side. Next time, I'll omit the salt from the olive-oil/herb mix.