Shakshuka Pizza

I had my first shakshuka when I was in Israel a few years ago at this restaurant I'll never be able to find again. I'd heard of the dish--eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce--before and was very curious about how it'd taste. I found it to be warming and comforting without being heavy.

It's pretty easy to make at home, but the limiting factor for me is always not having any bread to eat along with it. But then one day I had an extra ball of pizza dough and thought, why don't I just cook the eggs and tomato sauce on top of it? And thus shakshuka pizza was born.

The first time I made it I wasn't sure if the 7 minutes in the oven would be enough to cook the eggs so I made sure the tomato sauce was still hot when I topped the pizza. I guessed wrong, though, and the yolks ended up setting by the time I took the pizza out of the oven. I prefer my yolks still runny while the whites are set so the next time I refrigerated the sauce first and they came out perfect. 

I like to scoop up all the runny yolk and spread it all around the top of the pizza.  It might not be pretty, but it sure is yummy!

Shakshuka Pizza 
makes two 10" pizzas

2 balls of pizza dough
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 small onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 pinch red pepper flakes
1 cup tomato sauce
Salt, to taste
4 eggs
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
Parsley, chopped

Place a pizza stone on an oven rack set at the top 1/3 of the oven.  Preheat the oven to 550°F.

In a small saucepan, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil on medium.  Add the chopped onions and saute until starting to soften.  Add the garlic and continue to cook for another minute or two until the garlic has lost its bite.  Add the cumin, chili powder, and red pepper flakes and cook until the spices are toasty and fragrant.

Add the tomato sauce and simmer for 15 minutes.  Add salt to taste.  If you want your egg yolks to be set, use the sauce while it's still hot.  If you want your egg yolks to be runny, cool the sauce down and chill in the fridge before using.

Stretch the dough onto a parchment paper-lined flexible cutting board.

Spread half a tablespoon of olive oil on top of the dough.  Top with half of the tomato sauce.

Crack two eggs onto the pizza.  Top with half of the feta cheese.

Slide one of the pizzas and parchment paper onto the pizza stone and bake for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, turn the oven to broil and broil for 1-2 minutes.  Bake until the eggs are set to your liking and the crust is golden with spots of brown and a few small spots of char. 

Use tongs to slide the pizza with the parchment paper from the pizza stone onto a cutting board.  Top the pizza with the chopped parsley.  Slice and serve!

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Almond Pesto Pizza

It had been a while since I had made a margherita pizza, and my basil plant was getting a little full so I decided to make some pesto pizza.  I didn't have any pine nuts, though, so I decided to substitute in some slivered almonds which I already had instead.

Don't they kind of look like pine nuts anyways?  I also threw in some baby spinach leaves as suggested by Kenji from Serious Eats to "add some more green without overwhelming the other flavors with excess basil."  Normally I probably would've been afraid that the spinach would add its own unwanted flavor, but after my experience with adding spinach to green smoothies, I've realized how innocuous spinach leaves can be when mixed with other ingredients.

Almond Pesto Pizza

makes two 10" pizzas

2 balls of pizza dough

1 cup loosely packed basil leaves

1 cup loosely packed spinach leaves

1 small garlic clove

1-2 tablespoon Parmesan reggiano, grated

2 tablespoons raw slivered almonds

1/3 cup olive oil

Kosher salt, to taste

6 oz. fresh mozzarella, torn into chunks

Place a pizza stone on an oven rack set at the top 1/3 of the oven.  Preheat the oven to 550°F.

Add the basil, spinach, garlic, Parmesan reggiano, and almonds to a food processor.  While processing, stream in the olive oil until a smooth puree is formed.  Season with salt to taste.  Transfer to a small container and allow to settle.

Stretch the dough onto a parchment paper-lined flexible cutting board.

Spoon out some of the olive oil that has settled to the top of the pesto and spread over the pizza dough.

Drop dollops of pesto around the dough.  Top with the torn mozzarella.  Stretch and top the second ball of pizza dough.

Slide one of the pizzas and parchment paper onto the pizza stone and bake for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, turn the oven to broil and broil for 1-2 minutes.  Bake until the cheese is completely melted and the crust is golden with spots of brown and a few small spots of char.  

Use tongs to slide the pizza with the parchment paper from the pizza stone onto a cutting board.  Slice and serve!

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Oven-Fried Mac 'n' Cheese Pizza

I ended up with some leftover macaroni and cheese, so I thought I'd try to make a version of Za's Mac 'n' Cheese pizza at home.  Their version adds some caramelized onions to the macaroni and cheese and is baked in crust more similar to a pan pizza than the thin-crust pizzas I've been making lately.

To try to recreate that crust, I rolled out the dough instead of stretching it thin and decided to try making the pizza using the oven-fried method from the Modernist Cuisine at Home cookbook.  Warning:  this involves maneuvering a soft, sticky mass of dough topped with macaroni and cheese into a smoking hot pan of oil.  Proceed at your own risk.

Oven-Fried Mac 'n' Cheese Pizza
makes 1 personal pan pizza

1 ball of pizza dough
3/4 cup leftover macaroni and cheese
2 tablespoons caramelized onions
1 tablespoon bread crumbs
Oil for frying
Tabasco or Frank's hot sauce (optional)

Preheat the oven to 550°F.

On a floured surface, roll the pizza dough out to a 10" circle.

Top with the macaroni and cheese, caramelized onions, and bread crumbs.

Add enough oil to completely coat the bottom of a 10" all-metal frying pan, the kind you can put in the oven without any plastic parts melting.  Heat on high until the oil just starts to smoke.

Carefully slide the pizza into the pan using a pizza peel or a flexible cutting board.  Immediately transfer the pan to the oven.  Bake for 5 minutes.  After 5 minutes, turn the oven to broil and broil for two minutes.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before cutting and serving.

By keeping the pizza dough a little thicker and frying it in the pan, the crust becomes stable enough to stand up to heavier toppings like macaroni and cheese.  And even though you'll get a nice crispy crust on the bottom, you'll be surprised at how much oil is left in the pan, i.e. how little oil is absorbed by the pizza dough.

I like to add a little Tabasco or Frank's hot sauce on top just for an extra kick.

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Ken Forkish's Same-Day Straight Pizza Dough

I've been making pizzas at home for a while now and have been pretty content with the thin crust pizza dough recipe from The Kitchn.  But one day on a whim, I decided to try the pizza dough recipe in Ken Forkish' Flour Water Salt Yeast cookbook, and now I can never go back.

Sure, making the dough is a little more fussy, but the difference is amazing; with this recipe you get a super-thin crust with a chewy, poofy crust just like in a restaurant!  You can make the dough in the morning, shape it in the afternoon, and then make pizzas by early evening!  And if you let the dough rest a day or two in the fridge, it develops a wonderful flavor that makes it more than worth the wait.  After making this dough a few times, I feel like I've gotten the hang of it and just follow these 2 Post-Its:

But until you've mastered the recipe too, here's the more detailed directions, which I've streamlined a little from the cookbook.

Ken Forkish's Same-Day Straight Pizza Dough (adapted from Flour Water Salt Yeast)
makes enough dough for two 10" pizzas

250 g (about 1 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
175 g (about 3/4 cups) warm water, 90-95°F
5 g (about 2 teaspoons) kosher salt
0.5 g (about 1/8 teaspoon) instant dried yeast

Place the yeast and 1 tablespoon of the warm water in a small bowl and set aside.

Combine the flour and remaining warm water in a large bowl.

Mix by hand until just incorporated.

Cover and let rest for 20-30 minutes.

After it has rested, sprinkle the salt over the dough.

Stir the yeast mixture with your finger, then pour over the dough.  Use a small piece of dough to wipe the remaining yeast goop from the small bowl, then add it back to the rest of the dough.

Mix by hand, wetting your working hand before mixing so the dough doesn't stick to you.  (It's fine to rewet your hand three or four times while you mix.)

Reach underneath the dough and grab about one-quarter of it.  Gently stretch this section of dough and fold it over the top to the other side of the dough.  Repeat three more times with the remaining dough, until the salt and yeast are fully enclosed.  This process is called applying a fold.

Continue to mix the dough by alternating folding and pinching the dough with your fingers to simulate the motion performed by a dough hook when using a stand up mixer.  (I suppose you could just use a stand up mixer to knead the dough, but it really only takes me a few minutes, and the dough is so soft by this point that it's not a big deal at all).  Once all the ingredients have been fully incorporated, and you can't feel the grains of salt in the dough, cover and let rest.

After 30-60 minutes, apply a fold to the dough to help develop the gluten.

After folding, lightly coat the dough and the bottom of the bowl with olive oil to help prevent sticking.

Cover and let rest until the dough is about double its original volume, about 6 hours after mixing.

Moderately flour a work surface.  With floured hands, gently ease the dough out of the bowl onto the work surface in a somewhat even shape.

Dust the entire top of the dough with flour, then cut it into 2 equal-size pieces.

To shape the dough, apply a fold to each piece and then turn upside-down to seal the seam underneath.

Cradle the dough in both hands and gently stretch the dough from the top towards the sides and then under, rotating several times so that there is a nice, tight, even tension around the dough ball.  Try not to degas the dough while doing this.

At this point I transfer each ball of dough to its own sandwich bag, dribble in a little olive oil to coat, and let it rest in the fridge overnight, up to 2 days.  If you want to use it that day, let it rest at room temperature for 30-60 minutes and then refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to make the dough easier to shape.

When you're ready to use the pizza dough, place a pizza stone in the upper portion of your oven (about 8" below the broiler) and preheat to 600°F or as high as your oven can go (mine only goes to 550°F).  After it has preheated, continue heating the pizza stone for another 30 minutes.

Cover a peel or cutting board with parchment paper and lightly flour.  Remove the dough ball from the fridge and put it on the floured parchment paper.  Gently pat it down a bit to coat the bottom with flour.  Leaving about 1"of the outer rim undeflated, punch down the middle, then flip the dough over and repeat.

Using both hands, grab the rim and lift the dough so it hangs down vertically.  Let gravity pull the rest of the dough down and stretch it.  Run the rim between your hands, working all the way around the circumference of the dough several times.  Start stretching the rim between your hands while continuing to turn the dough, still letting the bottom of the dough pull down, expanding the surface.  Keep a close eye on the thickness of the dough; you want it thin, but you don't want it to tear or develop holes.

Spread the dough on the floured parchment paper and run your hands around the perimeter to shape it into a round and work out the kinks.  Top the pizza with your desired toppings.

Gently slide the pizza with the parchment paper onto the pizza stone.  Bake for 5 minutes, then switch to the broil setting and broil for 2 minutes, keeping a close eye on the pizza.

Bake until the cheese is completely melted and the crust is golden with spots of brown and a few small spots of char.  Use tongs to slide the pizza with the parchment paper from the pizza stone onto a cutting board.  Slice and serve!

The pizza above is a margherita pizza, which I learned in Rome was named after Queen Margherita.  The colors in the pizza--red, white, and green--are reflected in the Italian national flag.

Here's another pizza I've made from Flour Water Salt Yeast; this one is a pear and sweet potato pizza:

Here's the crispy kale pizza I've made in the past using this new pizza dough:

And here's the mashed potato pizza using this new dough:

Three years ago:  Bruschetta

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