Focaccia is a flat leavened oven-baked Italian bread. It is similar to a flatbread called pizza bianca (lit. 'white pizza') in Roman cuisine. Focaccia may be served as a side dish or as sandwich bread and it may be round, rectangular, or square in shape.

In ancient Rome, panis focacius was a flatbread baked on the hearth. The word is derived from the Latin focus, 'hearth, place for baking'. The basic recipe is thought by some to have originated with the Etruscans, but today it is widely associated with Ligurian cuisine,^{[citation needed]} while outside Liguria the word usually refers to the Genoese variants.

The first attestation of the word focaccia dates back to the 14th century.^{[page needed]}

Focaccia is sometimes considered to be a variant of pizza in publications outside Italy, although focaccia is left to rise after being flattened, while pizza is baked immediately.

Focaccia genovese (lit. 'Genoese focaccia'), marked by its finger-sized holes on its surface called "dimples" (ombrisalli in Genoese dialect), is brushed or sprinkled with olive oil, coarse salt, and sometimes water before the final rise.

In Genoa, focaccia is eaten in the morning at breakfast or during the day. It is often dipped in milk or in cappuccino at breakfast and eaten warm and wet.

Focaccia has countless variations along the Ligurian coast, from the biscuit-hard focaccia secca (lit. 'dry focaccia') to the corn-flour, oily, soft Voltri version.

An extreme example is focaccia con il formaggio (lit. 'focaccia with cheese'), also called focaccia di Recco or focaccia tipo Recco, which is made in Recco, near Genoa. This version has prescinsêua cheese sandwiched between two layers of paper-thin dough.