Fish Pizza with Sardines

Name: Sardine Pizza Recipe: Easy Fish Pizza with Canned Sardines
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 1 h 20 min
Cuisine: Italian cuisine
Ingredients: Pizza dough 400 g; Sardines in oil 1 can; Sweet onion 1; Olives 6-8; Mozzarella 100 g; Parmesan 50 g; Tomato 1; Tomato sauce 3-4 tbsp; Oregano, wine vinegar to taste

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1 h 20 mins

Strictly speaking, traditional fish pizzas – napoletana, romana, siciliana, capricciosa – are usually made with anchovies. But, to be honest, anchovies are unfamiliar to us, even a bit exotic.

I remember a question that used to stump me as a kid: what are anchovies? Anchovies (Engraulis) are small fish of the herring order. In Europe, for example, there is the European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus), or simply khamsa. Everybody knows what khamsa is: it is one of the anchovy species. By and large, in any recipe that calls for anchovies you can use good, large khamsa.

The second option is to use sardines (Clupea pilchardus). This is a quite common fish of the herring family, sold frozen, smoked, and canned in various ways.

The best-known sardine is the one canned in oil. Although, as experience shows, very often it is not sardines that go into the cans but other, more available fish: khamsa, sprats, other common anchovy species, even Baltic herring. I have heard there is even a notion of “sardines” made from whatever small fish is at hand, which sounds quite plausible.

In the USA, young herring is sometimes canned as sardines. The French say that sardines in oil are made only in France, that the trade is mostly manual, and that the sardines are caught using cod roe as bait, then processed and packed in cans. It is also very important that the sardines are left to “rest”, otherwise the flavor won’t be what it should be.

Making a classic pizza with anchovies is rather hard for us, because anchovies are hard to find.

This kind of fish pizza usually has a lot of tomatoes and is made square. Locals call it “tomato pie”, a homemade pizza. This is a pizza with canned sardines, based on the classic Italian recipes for Pizza Siciliana and Pizza Napoletana, adjusted to our local realities.

9 ingredientsTo the recipe

More with canned fish

Layered Fish Salad with Sardines

Mimosa Salad with Sardines

1 h

Canned Sardine Fish Soup

1 h

Ingredients

pizza 34 cm

Pizza dough 400 g
Sardines in oil 1 can
Sweet onion 1
Olives 6-8
Mozzarella 100 g
Parmesan 50 g
Tomato 1
Tomato sauce 3-4 tbsp
Oregano, wine vinegar to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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I saw anchovies only once, when I was fishing for salmon in the ocean off the coast of Northern California, deep-water trolling. A modest little fish, 15-20 cm long, very similar to our familiar salted sprat, only bigger. Sporting goods stores sell anchovies packed in plastic as bait.
Make a yeast dough following the recipe I described earlier: Pizza dough.
After the dough has risen, knead it briefly and stretch it into a flat round 5-7 mm thick. Place the dough on a baking pan, lightly greased with olive oil first.
Tomato sauce We’ll make the salsa di pomodoro ourselves, using the usual recipe I have already published. Since you don’t need much sauce, you can make a quick one: mince 1-2 garlic cloves, fry them lightly in 1 tbsp of olive oil, and add half a cup of tomato juice (100 ml). Add salt and pepper and simmer, stirring, until the sauce thickens. It is very tasty with a pinch of sugar added.
Cut the onion, preferably a sweet one, into thin strips and marinate in 1 tbsp of wine vinegar for at least half an hour. Then rinse the onion with water.
Cut the green or black pitted olives in half lengthwise.
Grate the Parmesan on a fine grater.
Peel the tomato and, without removing the seeds, cut it into very thin slices.
Drain all the liquid from the open can of sardines and break the fish by hand into small pieces, removing the bones.
Be sure to prick the dough on the pan with a fork in several places. Spread the tomato sauce over the dough.
Spread the marinated onion over the whole dough, separating it into strips with your hands. Sprinkle the pizza with dried oregano.
Arrange the olive halves and the tomato pieces. I recommend pressing the toppings lightly into the dough with your palms to even out the filling a little.
Then carefully arrange the sardine pieces over the dough.
Generously sprinkle the whole pizza with finely grated mozzarella, making sure the sardine pieces and olives stay on top. Finish with the Parmesan.
Fish pizza bakes in up to 20 minutes. After 15 minutes, keep an eye on how done the dough is; as soon as it starts to turn golden, the pizza is ready.
Cut the sardine pizza into 6-8 slices with a pizza wheel.
Serve the fish pizza hot only.
As a nice extra, if you like, scatter a handful of small green basil leaves over the finished pizza.