Olives and capers from Puglia, onions, mozzarella and tomato. A southern pizza.
John Drummond
Mise en place
Tick each one off as it goes in.
Makes 4 serves
Pugliese is built on what Puglia has — the olives and the capers are the local ingredients and the onion is what makes it southern rather than Neapolitan.
Cook the onions down first. Raw onion on a pizza that is only in the oven for seven minutes comes out raw onion, and it will be the only thing anyone tastes.
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.
Slice the onion thin and cook it down slowly in olive oil until soft and sweet: fifteen minutes, no colour, no rush. The only real cooking in the recipe. Skip it and you have a raw onion sandwich, not a Pugliese.
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 thin, then the torn mozzarella and the sliced tomatoes, then the cooked onions over the top. Olives and rinsed capers last, so they sit proud instead of sinking.
Six to eight minutes at full heat in a domestic oven, ninety seconds in a fire, until the olives just start to wrinkle. A pinch of dried oregano and a last drizzle of oil as it comes out.
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