New Year's Sicilian Style Pizza

This year marks the first time (in awhile) Chef Beef and I have not traveled anywhere for the holidays. I had time off during the winter holidays and I used it to embark upon the projects like drunken noodles and pork asado, but also this Sicilian style pizza recipe I had bookmarked several months earlier. It all started with this post from Slice, the Serious Eats pizza division. I wanted Sal's Sicilian style pizza in the worst way. I came home and told Chef Beef the next time we were in New York... Unfortunately, New York really isn't one of our primary travel destinations with the hours we log to both homesteads throughout the year.

When I saw that I could try to create the same magic in my very own home via this recipe, I jumped at the chance. The recipe takes 3 days to get great pizza and is worth the time -- if you have said time. Its actually an amalgamation of recipes for dough and sauce, culminating in the final product.

The most important part is the dough, starting with a sourdough or biga naturale starter to give fermentation and large air pockets to the dough. Though you can use the dough on the second day, without refrigerating, I highly recommend waiting until the third day even if you aren't using the sourdough. The dough for our second pizza (used on the third day) was much better all around in behavior, taste, and texture.

I didn't take many pictures of the dough making process, but I did document the 2 day sauce technique. In short, take 20 tomatoes and score their bottoms. Boil each for 10 seconds, then chill in ice water to loosen their skins. Peel, halve, and gut, reserving the guts for later use. Then place the tomatoes in an oiled pan with herbs, garlic, and basil leaves and roast on low heat for three hours.

Afterwards, these tomatoes are combined with some canned, gutted tomatoes and a reduction of tomato guts and parmesan rind for one of the more intense sauces I've encountered. It then marinates overnight with the vine stems from your fresh tomatoes to impart a really fresh tomato taste.

The dough rises on a sheet pan for a couple of hours with some sauce spread on top. It then gets par baked for a bit (we found 10 minutes was best) and then the toppings are added and then broiled. We shopped for a variety of toppings including hot coppa, proscuitto de parma, parmesan, fior d'lattte, buffalo mozzerella, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, red onions, and basil.

As a former Pizzaria employee, Chef Beef was in charge of topping our first attempt on New Year's eve. On New Year's day, we made the second pizza (which unfortunately was eaten too quickly to have its picture taken). It was much fluffier in crust, but both were delicious.

So the next time you have three whole days to make pizza, try it!