Salami Pizza Diavola with Mozzarella and Hot Pepper - Recipe
I couldn't find a classic recipe for “diavola” pizza, and even the Italian classics can't agree on one. They all agree on a few things: salami diavola should have a yeast dough, mozzarella, tomatoes, pepperoni or salami, and the very best olive oil. As for the rest, I was told “sentitevi liberi”, which seems to mean “feel free”.
They say the forerunner of pizza existed back with the ancient Greeks, who called it “πλακουντος” (plakous), a flat baked bread. Fragrant herbs, olives, onion and garlic were laid on this bread together with olive oil. In the modern world, the makeup of pizza is usually much more complex.
For example, pizza with sausage and cheese, besides the sausage, usually contains up to ten more ingredients. And the sausage itself can be almost anything. Sausages in a pizza topping are a playground for the cook's imagination and can be used as you like and as the situation allows. Smoked sausage is easily replaced with cooked sausage or frankfurters, or with chicken – pizza with smoked chicken, or fried chicken.
The Greeks believed that bread was sent to people by the gods of Olympus, and bread was often dedicated to the gods. Ancient warriors baked flat bread on their shields, generously topping it with whatever tasty things they had. The Romans, known lovers of plentiful, tasty food and of combining all sorts of products, brought back from Palestine after one of their countless military campaigns a dish called “picea”, an unleavened bread topped with vegetables, herbs and seasonings.
In Italy, however, there is another opinion. The ancient Roman (Italian) flatbread “focaccia”, or focaccia with cheese, is very much like pizza, a food of the peasants. Literally, the word simply means flatbread.
And only a couple of centuries ago Neapolitan masters began making food for the poor: pizza. It is, as a rule, a flatbread of dough sprinkled with oregano and basil, with tomatoes, olive oil and the staples of the local market: fish, meat, vegetables and so on. It's worth understanding that salami pizza, like any homemade pizza, depends largely on what the local market offers and, not least, on the season.
Pizza dough and sauce
Cold-Fermented Pizza DoughPizzeria-style cold-fermented pizza dough: mix it the day before, let it rest in the fridge 12–24 hours and stretch it into a thin base with a crispy crust.
The best Pizza Dough recipeWith this recipe you always get soft and chewy crust, that stretches nicely. Easy method of preparing ideal crust for a delicious pizza.
Quick Kefir Pizza DoughNo-yeast pizza dough made with kefir, flour and baking powder in 10 minutes. Soft and fluffy, it bakes into a homemade pizza in about half an hour.
Pizza Dough Without YeastQuick pizza dough without yeast: flour, water, olive oil and baking powder make a soft, fluffy base in 15 minutes. Tips on flour, kneading and baking time.
Homemade Tomato SauceHomemade tomato sauce from ripe fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic and herbs, slowly simmered until thick. Better than ketchup for pizza, pasta, meat and fish.Ingredients
34 cm pizza
- Pizza dough 400 g
- Salami 100 g
- Hot pepper 1-2
- Fresh basil 4-5 sprigs
- Cherry tomatoes 6-8
- Black olives 8-10
- Parmesan 2 tbsp
- Mozzarella 100 g
- Tomato sauce 3-4 tbsp
- Olive oil, oregano to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- Salami pizza, like any other pizza, starts with the simplest part: making the pizza dough. Yeast pizza dough is easy to make; the main thing is to keep to the proportions and not rush. Once the dough has risen, knead it lightly and stretch it on the pizza pan. If you want your salami pizza on a thin, crispy crust, you can add the toppings right away. You can also cover the dough on the pan with a towel and let it rest for half an hour, and then it will turn soft and fluffy.
- While the dough is rising, you can prepare all the toppings, as it's fashionable to say. Slice the dry-cured sausage, salami or pepperoni into very thin rounds. The thinner, the better. By the way, in any supermarket you can ask them to slice the sausage for you when you buy it.
- Take the fresh mozzarella out of its liquid and grate it on the coarse side of a grater. Grate the Parmesan on a fine grater and then blitz it in a blender so that it is finely ground. It's handy for sprinkling over pizza and other dishes, such as spaghetti with cheese. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon.
- Cut the hot pepper in half lengthwise, remove the seeds and white membranes, then cut the pod into 6-8 thin strips. Cut the pitted olives in half lengthwise. Pick all the leaves off the basil sprigs.
- Preparing the toppings for the salami pizza takes exactly as long as the dough needs to rise a little and the oven needs to heat to 180-190°C.
- Spread tomato sauce over the dough on the pan. It's better to make the sauce yourself rather than use tomato paste or ketchup. It's not difficult: take the flesh of ripe fresh or canned tomatoes, add pepper, salt, a pinch of nutmeg and fragrant Mediterranean herbs. Then simmer the tomatoes under a lid for 5-7 minutes.
- Lay whole basil leaves on the dough spread with tomato sauce. Evenly arrange thinly sliced salami on top. Sprinkle with 2-3 pinches of dried oregano.
- Arrange the cherry tomato halves and the olives, whole or halved, as you prefer.
- Sprinkle the salami pizza generously with grated Parmesan. When sprinkling, try not to cover the olives, tomatoes and pepper strips too much. Try to put most of the cheese closer to the edge, where the crust is. Lay the long thin strips of hot pepper radially from the center to the edge. Drizzle the pizza with olive oil.
- The salami pizza bakes in a preheated oven for about 20 minutes. It will definitely be done, but at 15 minutes, closer to the end of the cooking time, check how the dough is doing by lifting the edge of the pizza with a knife.
- Take the finished salami pizza out of the oven and scatter fresh basil leaves over it.
- Serve the salami pizza cut with a pizza wheel into 6-8 slices.
- To be honest, we only remembered that the salami pizza contains hot pepper afterwards, when a light, pleasant afterglow of spiciness lingered in the mouth.
- An incredibly tasty “Diavola” salami pizza. Many skeptics object that there's too little topping. For goodness' sake, the salami pizza weighs 800-900 grams in total, and most of that is topping.
Yield: 34 cm pizza Calories: 250 kcal per 100 g Prep time: 60 mins Cooking time: 30 mins Ready in: 1 h 30 mins Category: Pizza › Meat Pizza Cuisine: Italian cuisine Rating: