I’ve had a hankering for a real, Italian-style pizza, which is a shame as my favorite Italian pizzeria is a mere 4,689 miles away from where I am currently sitting. Not exactly a five minute jaunt down the road. American Italian-style pizza just isn’t the same as real Italian pizza and my area isn't known for its Italian food to begin with. And it had never really occurred to me to just make it myself, I don’t own a pizza oven (something I believed was crucial to good pizza) and the menu at my favorite pizzeria only lists “four cheese blend” under the description so I wasn’t even sure what cheeses to use in a traditional Italian-style Quattro Formaggi pizza even if I were to attempt it.
But pregnancy is a fickle mistress and she demanded a Quattro Formaggi pizza as soon as possible! And that’s why google is a good friend. The search results led me to a blog written by an American woman who has spent a long time living in Italy and perfecting traditional Italian recipes, written in English for those of us who don’t speak Italian. And she had a recipe for Quattro Formaggi pizza! It doesn't even require a pizza oven. Just a pizza stone. I can do that. Yay! I now knew what cheeses to use and she provided a basic pizza dough recipe for thin crust pizza. And behold, it is a thing of beauty.
Like any yeast bread, there is a bit of time spent making the dough. Now, I only cook every other day since it’s currently just the two of us and we have leftovers aplenty to keep us fed on my non-cooking days, so I opted to make the dough yesterday knowing it would simplify my Sunday greatly to have it ready to go. And it did! It only took me about thirty minutes to make the pizzas, not counting the time it takes the over to preheat to 525 degrees F. I didn’t even know my oven could go that high until today.
And I've only just realized that I've been blathering on and on about this amazing pizza and haven't linked you to the blog where I got the recipe, because it's delicious and totally worth your time! Deborah Mele is the fabulous women who runs Italian Food Forever. Check out her blog for this and other amazing Italian recipes.
Now, her recipe calls for a soft cheese, either Robiola or Stracchino, but I can tell you that my local Kroger doesn't carry either of those. Another google search linked me to this awesome website, Gourmet Sleuth, which will show you substitution ideas when you don't have the called-for ingredients. And the substitutions for Robiola and Stracchino were listed as cream cheese or mascarpone. For budgetary reasons I opted to use cream cheese since mascarpone is about three times more expensive than cream cheese. The other three cheeses for this pizza are mozzarella, Gorgonzola, and Parmesan. Yummy blend! Mozzarella and Parmesan are definitely budget friendly, but the Gorgonzola was a bit of a splurge.
Deborah's recipe also doesn't call for tomato sauce, and since I'm not a fan of tomatoes to begin with I opted to make it as directed. But I might put tomato sauce on it next time as I believe the pizzeria I loved did have a bit of sauce. Tomato sauce might add a bit more of a contrasting flavor to the cheeses.
Anyway, the breakdown. The pizza dough recipe made enough dough for four 12" pizzas, so half of the dough is wrapped and in the freezer for next time. The actual pizza recipe only calls for two balls of dough to make two 12" pizzas. The total cost of the meal was $6.00, with each pizza costing $3.00. I believe this technically makes this the most expensive recipe on this blog to date, but really that's not bad. You'll only want a slice or two because the calorie count on this definitely isn't low. Each slice, four slices per pizza as 12" isn't actually that big, works out to be 316 calories. And trust me, you can't just eat one slice.
The cheeses are what make this pizza pricey. The dough itself only cost $0.90 to make, and since I only used half today, that's only $0.45. Can you believe that? Since starting this project I'm constantly amazed how cheap it really is to make homemade foods. It's one of those things I knew in theory but now doing the math on it on a regular basis really drives the point home.
Anyway, I hope this has inspired you to try your hand at homemade pizza! It's certainly cheaper and tastier than delivery. Much love, Hailee
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