A new way with pizza

Categories:pizza
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I bore easily which is why I love cooking. There’s always something new and such is the case with a pizza recipe and method I read about in Bon Appetit. It’s from a guy, Joe Beddia, who the magazine deemed the best pizza maker in the United States.

Here are the two things that have changed the way I’ll make pizza forever. First, it’s the baking method. You need a pizza stone for this but everyone should spend the $40 to get one anyway. I’ve had mine for at least 20 years. It lives in the oven permanently. So you heat the oven to 500 degrees for an hour. An hour. Don’t skip this step. It allows the stone to get super hot. Then you slide your pie onto the stone and cook it for four minutes. Yes, just four minutes. Then you turn the oven to broil and let the crust blister, about five minutes.

It works like a charm. The bottom of the crust gets nice and brown and crunchy and the top looks like a pizza from the most expensive pizza joint you’ve ever visited. I buy pre-made pizza dough at my beloved Publix that’s already been formed into a round, making this even easier than it needs to be.

Now the new sauce. New to me. I have a basic objection to Alfredo sauce because the jarred variety is just noxious. But Joe Beddia’s white sauce gets to the heart of the matter with ingredients I can cheer about. It’s:

2 cups of heavy cream

1/2 cup chopped basil

1/4 cup chopped chives

1/4 cup chopped fennel fronds (if you don’t like fennel double the chives)

1 1/2  teaspoons finely grated lemon zest

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 finely grated garlic clove (Don’t have a microplane? Get one)

Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

Use an immersion blender or a hand mixer to beat it until it’s thick and creamy and then season with salt and pepper. It makes the BEST white sauce. Sorry for the all caps. I cut the recipe in half for one pizza.

I made my pizza with mushrooms and chorizo. You pick your ingredients. Just make the crust Joe’s way and use his white sauce. It may not change your life, but it could. But don’t believe me. Read this in Bon Appetit to confirm that I’m right.


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