Gorgonzola & capicola pizza
Some mornings, Nat and I stop at Il Piccolo Forno in the Strip District, and grab a cold slice of pizza for breakfast. One of our favorites is onion and bleu cheese.
Like brik, their pizza is something we really wanted to have at home. I had a good crust recipe, but it was not right for this - I needed a thin, Neapolitan-style crust. Luckily for Christmas I had given Nat a copy of Nick Malgieri’s How to Bake : Complete Guide to Perfect Cakes, Cookies, Pies, Tarts, Breads, Pizzas, Muffins, and it contained just what I was looking for.
The particular recipe is available online, poorly formatted. Please note, the proportions in the half recipe are slightly different. Really, what you want is to buy the book - it’s useful in all kinds of ways, not just for producing perfect Neapolitan crusts. (I will note that I think Malgieri sometimes orders steps in a suboptimal way, so it pays more than usual to read the whole thing through and reorder. For example, he says to start proofing the yeast in this recipe after mixing together the flour and salt; I did it before, so that by the time I had the mix ready, the yeast was done proofing.)
To the list of toppings, we added a handful of crumbled gorgonzola and a handful of mozzarella per pizza, very thin sliced onions, and some sliced capicola.
Because of the additional toppings, and the peculiarities of our oven, it took about 45 minutes to cook ours to perfect crusty doneness. We ate one piping hot, with cold beer to help it along, and cooled the second on a rack, so that the crust wouldn’t get soggy. It is slated for tomorrow’s breakfast - perfect, as Il Piccolo Forno is closed on Mondays.