“Little Italy” Neapolitan Style Pizza

A little rom com movie inspired this next recipe. One of the main characters in the movie Little Italy is the pizza and this recipe is inspired by one of the pizzas made in the movie. It combines nearly all your taste buds; sweet, smokey, salty and savoury.

This recipe is made even better with an amazing pizza crust recipe and a pizza oven. I use Tori’s Thin Crust Pizza dough recipe from the cookbook Fraiche Food Full Hearts. It’s one of the best dough recipes I’ve ever made, so light, flexible and easy to shape. The best part is that you make it the night before and let it rise and rest for 18-20 hours.

My brother has an awesome little portable pizza oven that we used to cook the pizzas and it cooks on a high heat to give you that Neapolitan style pizza. I’m still working on getting my pizza crust the right thickness but this attempt was the closest to what I’m looking for. Using parchment paper helps if you don’t have the proper equipment to place your pizza in the oven.

“Little Italy“ Neapolitan Style Pizza

Tori’s Thin Crust Pizza Dough:

From Fraiche Food Full Hearts

Ingredients:

• 5 1/2 cups all purpose flour, plus extra for dusting

• 1 tablespoon salt

• 1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast

• 2 1/2 cups water, room temperature

• semolina flour, for dusting

Instructions:

1. Whisk together the all purpose flour, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Stir in the water with a wooden spoon until well combined, using your hands if needed to work in all the flour. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 18-20 hours. Dough should double in size

2. Gently deflate the dough by pushing it down with your hands. Generously sprinkle a work surface with semolina flour, scrape the dough onto it, and divide the dough into 6 to 8 equal portions and form into a ball.

3. Preheat pizza oven to a temperature around 700F - high temperature gives you the best cook.

4. Dust 1 ball of dough with more all purpose flour. Using your hands, stretch out the dough into a circle about 12 inches in diameter.

5. Generously sprinkle semolina flour a piece of parchment and place shaped crust onto it. Now it’s ready for your pizza toppings.

Now onto my recipe!

Ingredients:

• 1 package of prosciutto

• 1 cup smoked Gouda cheese, shredded or sliced

• 1 cup mushrooms, chopped, cooked with Mesquite seasoning and butter

• Fig Preserves or jam - about 1-2 tablespoons each pizza (this acts as your sauce) Add a little water to thin it out of too thick

• big handful of fresh arugula for each pizza

Instructions:

1. Grab your prepared pizza crust on parchment and spread the base using fig preserves.

2. Place prosciutto, smoked gouda and mesquite mushrooms onto crust.

3. Place pizza into preheated pizza oven and cook for about 3-5 minutes, until bottom of dough is nice and browned

4. Remove pizza from oven and top with a handful of fresh arugula. Using a pizza cutter slice up your pizza and dig in!

You can also cook this recipe in a regular oven you just have to have a pizza stone or a rimless pan. With the pizza stone or pan in the oven preheat to a high heat of 500-550F. Cook time will also be a little longer when using a regular oven.

When I made the dough recipe I had some leftover so I thought to test out a couple dessert pizzas. Because we were at the cabin we decided to try a S’mores pizza; using dark chocolate, marshmallows and crushed graham crackers. The second dessert pizza was an oldie but a goodie, Cinnamon Sugar; using butter, cinnamon, sugar and a quick glaze (icing sugar and milk). These two recipes were both delicious and a quick and easy way to use up leftover dough.

This was definitely the best way to start off my summer at the cabin. The dough recipe from Fraiche Food Full Hearts is now one of my favourites and I hope to test out many more fun flavours of pizza soon!

I found my copy of this cookbook at Indigo and it’s become one of my favourites, I’ve used several recipes out of this book and have loved every one!

Enjoy!

Recipes and more will always be posted on my Instagram follow me @kaylieped