Cookbook: Genuine Pizza

We love our pizzas here at my house, and we've never forgotten the pizza we ate in Rome in 2018. I was delighted to receive this book as a birthday present. The author, Michael Schwartz, created the Genuine Pizza restaurants. 

Schwartz tells us that there are several different kinds of pizza dough out there. He has chosen to take the most famous, the original Neapolitan dough, with nothing but flour, yeast, water, and salt, and add honey and beer. 

Here is his Pizza Dough recipe:

1/2 cup beer, at room temperature

2 tablespoons mild honey

1 packet active dry yeast

3 cups plus 6 tablespoons bread flour

1/2 cup whole-wheat flour

1 tablespoon salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

There is quite a bit of mixing and waiting and kneading to this recipe, but the instructions are too detailed to list here. It makes enough for four pizzas.

The tomato sauce Schwartz recommends is simple, with olive oil, tomatoes, salt, pepper.

One of the charms of the books, though, is that it offers simple for those of us who like simple, but it also offers complexity for those of us who prefer that. There are many pizza preferences in the world, and the book speaks to that, sharing combinations and recipes for every taste.

I made the Classic Cheese Pizza. The recipe uses pizza dough, tomato sauce, and 2/3 cup of cheese (Schwartz specifies Fontina cheese) along with salt and red pepper and 2 tablespoons of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

The oven and the baking stone are both preheated to 500 degrees. It cooks for ten minutes, and Schwartz looks for the crust to be rich brown and burnished, but we like our pizza a little less burned.

Happy with the result.