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1
Combine the flour, salt, olive oil and water. Work the mass until it forms a smooth, extensible dough — it should be supple enough to stretch without snapping back. Wrap and rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. The dough is ready when it yields immediately to gentle pressure and shows no elasticity.
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2
Set the oven to its maximum temperature — 250 °C in a domestic oven, 300 °C or above in a professional one. Oil a copper baking tray generously with olive oil. Divide the dough into two equal pieces.
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3
Take the first piece of dough and stretch it over the backs of the hands and forearms — never use a rolling pin. Work outward from the centre, rotating and re-draping, until the sheet is stretched to translucency and covers the oiled tray with a slight overhang. The sheet must be thin enough that the tray is faintly visible through it; any opacity signals insufficient stretching.
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4
Distribute the crescenza in irregular pieces across the surface of the bottom sheet, spacing them evenly so that no area is left without cheese and no area is overloaded. Uneven distribution produces zones that are simultaneously over-cooked and under-cooked. This is where the dish lives or dies: if the cheese is unevenly placed or the dough has not been stretched to true translucency, neither can be corrected after the oven.
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5
Stretch the second piece of dough by the same hand-and-forearm method until it matches the first in thinness and translucency. Drape it over the cheese layer. Press the overhanging edges of both sheets together and trim or fold them to seal the perimeter. Paint the entire top surface with olive oil.
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6
Slide the tray into the oven at maximum heat. Bake until the top layer is blistered, golden-brown in patches, and the cheese beneath is visibly liquid and moving when the tray is tilted. The surface should show the characteristic uneven blistering — pale translucent areas beside deep golden ones — that only extreme heat and hand-stretched dough can produce.
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7
Remove from the oven. Cut and serve immediately on the tray: once the focaccia cools even slightly, the crescenza solidifies and the defining contrast between shatteringly crisp dough and liquid cheese interior is lost.