It’s February: the dog days of winter. All the bills have come in now for Christmas. Your gas and electric bill is higher than normal due to less daylight and low temperatures. If you have children, registration is due for spring sports and summer camps. We know the price of everything has skyrocketed over the past year or so…and now eggs…EGGS are a Valentine’s meme due to how expensive they have become. I’m going to share some cost-saving recipes and measures as it’s all about stretching your dollar this month!
Anything worth doing takes time, to include cooking and saving money. Yes this is a multi-day process, but it’s a super-easy multi-day process. Like the old Bible saying goes, give a man a pizza, feed him for a day. Teach him how to make a pizza, feed him for life. Look it up; it’s in the Book of Jabroni.
In honor of Pizza Day, I decided I wanted to try my hand at a NY-classic: White Pizza.First, let’s clear some things up: NY white pizza is NOT Italian pizza bianchi and traditional white pizza does NOT have a sauce. It’s just bread, olive oil, cheese and herbs. A sprinkling of salt and pepper is welcome, too. Because there is no sauce, I went full hydration when it comes to pizza dough: 85%. That’s right: time to break out your calculators again! Let’s get to work. This is the goods and great for anyone that gets acid reflux from traditional tomato-based pizzas. Try my other pizzas: a loaded Neaopolitan, my post-Napoli visit “Near”apolitan Margherita and NY-style Meatball Pizza.
White Pizza
Pizza, like everything, has gotten more expensive. A medium pizza, like this one, averages about $16. Add on a delivery fee which doesn’t go to the driver, plus tip, and this pizza would cost about $22, or about $40 for 2 pizzas (which this recipe makes). Yes, if you bought every ingredient here, it would be more than $40. However, you’d have so much left that all you need to do is buy some extra mozz and you can make TONS of pizzas for a fraction of the cost of commercial pizza…and this pizza is more likely better than your local option!
3 cups bread flour (or AP flour)
1 packet yeast
Extra-virgin olive oil
Grated Pecorino-Romano Cheese
Block of whole milk mozzarella, grated
Small container of Ricotta con Latte
1 tbsp minced fresh oregano
Coarse sea salt
Garlic powder
Semolina flour
Other
Digital scale
Food processor
Pizza stone
Pizza Peel or very large spatula
Pastry brush
Prepare the dough. A full day before you want to eat your pizza, place a bowl on your digital scale, zero-it out, and set to ml (if you don’t have that option, use grams). Scoop in 3 cups of flour into the bowl and note the weight for your calculation. [For me it was 483 ml. To get 68% hydration rate, bust out the calculator and take your flour’s weight and multiply it by 0.68. Whatever that resulting number is will be the proper weight of water you need. For me, it was 328 ml.] Remove the bowl of flour from the scale and place an empty measuring cup on the scale, zero it out, then add warm water to your measuring cup until it hits your calculated weight. Stir the yeast into the water and allow it to bloom and get bubbly for about 5-10 mins.
Meanwhile, lightly grease two empty bowls and add the measured flour into the bowl of your food processor, along with 2 tsp table salt. Add in the bloomed yeasty water and 1 tsp olive oil. Mix until the dough forms into a ball on the blade, about 30 seconds. Remove the dough and split it in half, forming each half into a ball and placing each in its own bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator to rise for 24 hours.
Prepare the pizza. The next day, about 2 hours before you want to start cooking the pizza, remove the dough from the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature, keeping the bowls covered.
One hour before you cook the pizza, place a pizza stone on the 2nd-highest rack of your oven and preheat to 550 degrees (or as hot as your oven allows).
Twenty minutes before you cook the pizza, grate your mozzarella, place some extra bread flour in a medium-sized bowl, dusting a work-surface with some, and dust the pizza peel with semolina flour.
When ready to make the pizza, scoop up one ball of dough and place it into the bowl of flour (smooth side-up). Flip the dough and place down into the flour again, giving a light press. Move the floured dough (smooth side-down) to your flour-dusted work surface. Using your fingertips, about an inch from the edge, create the crust by pressing your fingers down, turning the dough a quarter turn and repeating this process all around the dough. Continue pressing the dough outward from the middle. Then, hold down the dough with one hand and start stretching it out with the other, moving the dough in a circular fashion, until it's about 12-13 inches wide, making any final adjustments.
When you have the dough in the final shape, move it to your prepared pizza peel and adjust the shape. At this point you need to move quickly to ensure the dough doesn’t stick to the peel. Using a pastry brush, apply some water to the entire crust. Don’t leave pools of water, just coat the dough. Drizzle the dough with a little olive oil and season with sea salt and black pepper and some oregano. Then sprinkle on about 3 heavy pinches of Pecorino, followed by sprinkling on garlic powder across the surface of the pizza in a zig-zag pattern. Sprinkle on about half of the mozzarella.
Using a teaspoon, place little heaps of the ricotta on the pizza, giving them a gentle press to flatten. Sprinkle on some more pecorino and oregano. Lift your peel and give a light shake to ensure the dough is not stuck. It should shuffle back and forth. If it doesn’t shuffle, place some more flour underneath the sticky spot(s). Transfer the pizza to the preheated oven, angling your peel and letting the edge of the dough slide onto the far edge of the pizza stone. Then, moving your peel angle downward toward the stone, smoothly pull the peel back towards you allowing the pizza to gently fall onto the stone.
Cook the pizza for 8-10 minutes, until the cheese is bubbling and the crust has browned, rotating the pizza 180 degrees after 4 mins. Remove the pizza, using the peel, and place on a cooling rack for a few minutes. Then, place on a cutting board and slice up. I prefer to use a large chef’s knife as opposed to lousy pizza rollers.
______________________________ Copyright 2023, Brendan McCann, All Rights Reserved.
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