Pizza quattro formaggi

Pizza is one of my favourite comfort foods. A real pizza cannot be considered junk food. In fact a traditional pizza can be a part of a healthy diet. A real pizza has not much to do with the over-loaded pies dripping with greasy cheese served at most pizza parlours. There should only be few simple ingredients on the base. The toppings should not be fighting with each other for attention.

It took me some years to find a perfect pizza recipe. My benchmark were the pizzas I devoured in Italy so I guess it's only natural that the recipe that ended my search is actually Italian. It comes from a girl called Alice who is a cook on a YouTube channel MypersonaltrainerTv. If you speak Italian you should watch some of her videos. If you don't, you can still watch them. They are really fun. 

The part that I took from ricetta di Alice is the pizza base (it comes from her recipe for pizza with olives), which has always been a challenge for me. The topping is a selection of classic Italian cheeses. I chose gorgonzola (my favourite cheese) for its sharpness, fontina for it's strenght (in other words: it smells), mozzarella to soften things a bit, and parmezan  to round it up nicely. Feel free to experiment with your own blends. 

The unusual thing about Alice's base is that part of the flour is substituted with boiled and mashed potatoes. It helps to make the dough really soft and fluffy on the inside, while nice and crispy on the outside. Plus you only knead it for about 3 minutes and it rises for 1 hour. And it cuts down on some calories, so it's a win-win. 

Ingredients:

For the base:

170g/6oz boiled potatoes

300g/10oz and 1Tbsp all purpose flour

100ml/3.5oz warm water

40ml/1.5oz milk (room temperature)

22g/about 1Tbsp fresh yeast

5g/1tsp sugar

5g/tsp fine salt

2Tbsp olive oil

For the top:

100g/3.5oz gorgonzola cheese (not too creamy, I like gorgonzola piccante)

100g/3.5oz fontina cheese

100g/3.5oz mozzarella cheese (from the block, not the one in a bag with liquid)

100g/3.5oz parmezan cheese

Start with potatoes. Put some water in a small pot and start boiling. In the meantime peel the potatoes (you want 170g peeled, not 170g with the peel on). Cut them in thick slices and put in boiling water. Cook for 10 minutes and drain. Mash them well.While the potatoes are cooling a bit prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Put yeast and sugar in warm water and mix to disolve. 

Put flour in a large bowl, make a small hole in the middle and pour in the yeast mixture, milk, and 1Tbsp olive oil. Mix it a bit with a knife. 

Add warm mashed potatoes, salt and mix with a knife at first and then with your hands. You want to work the dough quickly. It should only take you about 3 minutes, just enough time for all the ingredients to incorporate well. If you knead it too long you will have to keep adding more flour and then the dough will loose it's fluff. 

Cover a large baking sheet (the one that comes with your oven) with baking parchment. Drizzle it with the remaining Tbsp of olive oil. 

Transfer the dough to the baking sheet and push it down in the olive oil. Turn it around once so it's oiled on both sides and start pushing and stretching the dough with your hands from the center to the edges. It will take you just a couple of minutes. Don't worry if the dough doesn't come up exactly to the edges of the baking sheet.

Place the baking sheet in a warm place for 1 hour. You want the temperature to be around 30C (about 85F). The best place in my house for that turned out to be a cupboard with a water heater in my bathroom.

After half an hour you can turn on your oven and start preparing the cheese. Heat up the oven to 250C/480F.

Cut fontina and mozzarella into small cubes. Cut gorgonzola into cubes as well. Grate parmezan.

Once the hour is up put just the dough in the oven for 7 minutes.

Take it out and sprinkle the surface evenly with the cheese cubes (I spread each cheese separately) and finish with parmesan.

Put in the oven for 7 more minutes and it's done! Now enjoy! 

This is a really filling pizza. It can easily serve 4 adults, especially if you serve it as a second course. I would recommend ratatouille or fresh tomato soup for the first course (both recipes can be found on my blog). 

If you want to make two pizzas just double the ingredients and divide the ready dough in half.

Fontina might be hard to come by (as I have already experienced it myself) so you may have to substitute it with another cheese. I've used raclette instead of fontina and it worked well enough. In general you want to look for a semi-hard cheese (kind of like Gouda) but with a strong smell (or stink so to speak).