Sicilian Pizza Recipe

I rarely check the email address associated with this blog, so I get behind on correspondence. I have to go to a different location and turn on a computer I don’t use much. Sorry about that.

A reader asked me for my current pizza recipe, and I don’t think I sent it, so I am trying to make up for it now.

This is for a Sicilian made in a 9″x13″ aluminum quarter sheet pan. I season my pans with olive oil, baking it on at 500° or so until it’s a nice, slick film. A lot of people love steel and iron, but the truth is that aluminum gives a better crust, and it’s light and easy to work with.

I used to use 1-1/3 times as much dough, for a taller crust. My friend Mike is staying with me, and he has blood sugar issues, so I decided to try a thinner crust. It’s still excellent. If you want a taller crust, do the multiplication.

Whatever you decide to do, you want about 2/3 as much water as flour, by weight. Don’t measure the flour and water by volume, because you will get inconsistent results. Be precise about this. A small variation can ruin your pizza. Don’t be an idiot and say you have to do everything by feel.

The big exception here is the sauce. You want 4 ounces by volume. It can be hard trying to figure out exactly what 4 ounces of sauce weigh, but the volume figure is what you’re shooting for.

SICILIAN PIZZA WITH 3/4-HEIGHT CRUST

300 g high-gluten flour, like All Trumps or GFS Primo Gusto
200 g water
1 tsp. salt
1.5 tsp. sugar
1/8 tsp. instant yeast – This will take hours to rise, so multiply by 4 if you’re in a hurry.
1/2 tsp. pepper
1.5 tsp. gluten if using bread flour – You may want to add a little more water.

Mix everything but the water in a big food processor with a chopper blade. Add the water and process for up to a minute. Dry flour will fly up and stick to the sides of the bowl in the first few seconds. I like to stop the processor and scrape it back into the dough with a silicone spatula. Then I continue.

Pour olive oil into your sheet pan. When it spreads out, it should be a circle at least 5″ in diameter. Put a little oil on your hands. Take the dough out and turn it inside out a few times, stretching it to make it tighter so it gives a good oven spring. Flatten it out into sort of a crude rectangle about an inch thick. Put it in the pan, roll it in the oil, and cover the pan with plastic.

After at least 20 minutes, Try stretching it to fit the pan. If it won’t cooperate, do what you can and return after 20 more minutes. Once it’s stretched, put dents all over the top of the dough with your fingers. Then turn it over and fit it to the pan. The dents will form nice ripples and so on in the finished crust.

SAUCE INGREDIENTS

4 oz. volume or ~135 g weight Stanislaus Saporito sauce
4 oz. water

If you want a sauce that tastes more ripe, substitute around 1-1/2 oz. of the fruit juice of your choice for part of the water.

1 tsp. sugar
1 tbsp. oil
1-1/2 tsp. vinegar
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. oregano

CHEESE

6 slices Publix brand provolone
Enough Boar’s Head mozzarella (whole milk, low moisture) to make up 12 oz.

I used to use Gordon Food Service provolone, but it seems kind of rubbery these days. Boar’s Head deli mozzarella works well, but it’s expensive, so try to find something else. You can also substitute other things, such as cheddar or munster. Swiss can be very nice.

Cut the mozzarella in cubes if you want to make things easy. Otherwise, thin slices will work. I tell the grocery people to make me 1/2″ slices so I can turn them into cubes easily.

Apply the sauce to the crust. If you want, you can parbake it first, but it doesn’t really improve it. Apply the provolone. Spread the mozzarella over it. Sprinkle the pie with oregano. Add toppings.

I like to put a few slivers of cheese on the outer edge of the crust so they melt and burn against the pan. You have to have a well-seasoned pan, though, or the cheese will stick.

Bake at 500° or more (my oven does 550°) on the lowest rack, until you get what you want. These days, I have been burning pizzas pretty good, at up to 17 minutes. I use a pizza steel now. I put it on the lowest rack and let it get good and hot. Then I put the pizza pan on it.

Take the pie out of the pan and put it on a wire rack if you are obsessed with crunchiness. If not, you can put it on a pizza tray.

You will probably have to play around to see how to handle your particular oven.

You can use just about any flour you want. They all work, but they give results that are good in different ways.

I suggest you make yourself a pizza peel like the one I made. You can find photos on this blog. You just cut it out of a pizza pan, bend it, and sand off the rough bits. You need something as wide as the quarter sheet is long in order to get all the way under the crust, break any sticky spots loose, and support the pizza.

The sauce comes in huge cans, so you should break every can into portions and freeze them in airtight bags. I divide my cans into 4 portions. When I want pizza, I take the frozen sauce out and slice off as much as I want, using a scale to measure it. Then I melt it in the microwave and add my other ingredients.

That’s about it. The results are extraordinary. Maybe you can improve on them.