Pizza

Marino is reputed to make fantastic pizzas, but he warned us right away that we would not be getting any because the weather was too cold for the dough to rise properly. BUT we had a couple of warmish days our last week. So we begged, and Marino consented as a gift to us. It was the first time that he’d made pizza for lunch, but it would have been too cool in the evening to make it then.

Marino prepared the dough first thing in the morning and let it rise in front of the wood-burning stove.

He kneaded the dough every few hours, of course.

The fire was started a couple of hours before cooking time so that it could heat to 230 degrees Celsius.

Elide washed the pizza trays and let them warm in the sun. We’ve been told that pizza stones are not used in Italy.

Marino weighed 250 grams of dough into each pizza tray, let it rise for another half an hour, and then spread it out by hand.

We topped the pizzas with combinations of zucchini, potato, peppers, eggplant, cooked onions, rosemary, chili, and tomato sauce. Olive oil, salt, and cubed mozzarella were then added to each pizza.

Marino cleared out the ash from the heated oven, and we popped in the pizzas for 7-8 minutes.

Marino pulled out the pizzas from the oven, removed them from the trays, and tossed them onto the table.

Elide cut them up quickly, and put a combination on each serving plate.
Eleven pizzas for 6 people! We ate them for the next three meals.

No lie, these were the best pizzas I've ever had.