Cheese and anchovies, capers, oregano. Salt on salt on salt — and it works.
John Drummond
Mise en place
Tick each one off as it goes in.
Makes 4 serves
Anchovies frighten people who have only had the ones on a bad takeaway pizza. Buy decent ones, use eight to ten small fillets, and they do not shout — they just make everything else taste more of itself.
Rinse the capers. They come packed in enough salt to season a soup, and between them and the anchovies you will otherwise end up with something nobody can finish.
Black olives would work here. I have not tried it yet.
The method
Oven as hot as it goes, and get it there early: an hour before you want to eat, with the stone or the steel already in. Domestic ovens lie about being ready. Lighting the fire instead? Floor around 400°C and a flame licking the dome. This is the whole recipe, really; the rest is assembly.
Crush the San Marzanos by hand. Salt, a dash of pepper, the garlic only if you want it. Do not cook this sauce. It gets all the cooking it needs on the base; simmer it first and it goes sweet and dull.
One ball of my pizza dough, rested: the flour, wine and oil above make one batch, four bases, as the Pizza Dough recipe says. Knuckles, not a rolling pin. A pin drives the air out of the rim and it never comes back. Middle out, outer two centimetres left alone, then pick it up and let gravity finish it. If it fights you, it is not rested: walk away for ten minutes rather than force it.
Olive oil on the bare base before the sauce goes anywhere near it. It seals the dough: a crisp base, not a sodden middle. Good Italian oil. You will taste it.
Sauce on thin, stopped short of the rim. Then buffalo mozzarella if you have it, a good shredded one if you don't. Not the pizza to be precious on: the anchovies dominate regardless. Drain it either way.
Eight to ten small fillets, laid out so every slice gets one. Arranged, not scattered. Two on a slice is too salty; none is a Margherita. Both are on you, not the anchovy.
Rinse the capers under cold water and pat them dry, then two tablespoons across the top. Skip the rinse and it is inedible. This step makes or breaks it.
Dried oregano, a pinch of salt flakes, chilli flakes if you want them. Dried, not fresh: one of the few places the dried herb is the right answer.
Six to eight minutes at full heat in a domestic oven, ninety seconds in a fire, until the rim blisters and the anchovies melt back into the cheese. Finish with oil.
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