Erica De Mane

Recipe: Pizza with Rosemary Onions and Fontina Valle d’Aosta

I never used to like making pizza at home, mainly because it seemed so difficult. This, I’m happy to say, is no longer true. I’ve overcome my resistance, and I now turn out a fairly authentic, crusty, pully pizza that I’m proud of. But I’ve learned that you’ve got to start out with the right equipment. I’ve never been one for fancy kitchen utensils, but when it comes to pizza making, they’ll save you a lot of frustration.

For me the biggest technical challenge in producing an authentic and nice-looking pizza at home is having a large enough pizza stone, so that when you slip the pizza into the oven from your peel (the big spatula the pizza goes into the oven on—got to have one of those, too), it doesn’t go shooting over the undersized stone and into the back of the oven, folding up and dripping all over, making a big, smoky mess. That used to happen to me a lot, and it was very discouraging. I finally broke down and bought something big and sensible. Get a big stone. It will really help. A big rectangular one, not some measly round thing the same size as the pizza you’re making. And, second, don’t be stingy with the cornmeal. You’ve really got to coat your pizza peel with plenty of coarse cornmeal or semolina (although semolina burns faster), so that while you’re scattering on your anchovies, tomato, candy corn, what have you, the dough doesn’t start adhering to the peel, making a trouble-free slide to the stone virtually impossible. (I’ve tried using regular flour, but it soaks into the dough too quickly.) Without a dry base for your dough to slide on, you wind up using so much back-and-forth action trying to coax the stuck pizza off the peel that a disaster is inevitable. I hate when that happens, but it doesn’t have to.  Making pizza can really be fun. I promise you.

I like to come up with pizza toppings I can’t necessarily get at pizzerias, usually trying ones without tomato and without mozzarella, just for the hell of it, but there’s a fine line between improvisation and stupidity when it comes to creative cooking. I’m not a fusion girl. When I mix it up, I mix it up only with Italian flavors, maybe straying from regional tradition but not from what most Italians would recognize as  familiar tastes.

Winter is not the most exciting time for conjuring up newfangled pizza toppings, but, hey, we’ll always have cheese and onions ( I hope). With this thought in mind I’ve gone about making a tomatoless pizza with a rather Northern feel, perfect for the miserable New York weather I’m now experiencing. I’ve chosen Fontina, the nutty, sweet, easy-melting raw cow’s milk cheese from the Italian Alps. I caramelized the onions, but then I discovered that they together with the sweetish Fontina made my first version of this pizza a little too sweet. Second time around I added a drizzle of Spanish sherry vinegar to the onions. It made all the difference for the balance of flavors.  I hope you’ll enjoy it. And don’t forget to jack up your oven to the highest possible temperature, so you get those good slightly burned edges that are so delicious.

Pizza with Rosemary Onions and Fontina Valle d’Aosta

(Makes 2 approximately 10- to 11-inch pizzas)

For the dough:

1 packet active dry yeast
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for the bowls
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus a little more for kneading
1 teaspoon salt
About ½ cup coarse cornmeal or semolina flour

For the top:

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 Vidalia onions, very thinly sliced
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
3 whole allspice, ground to a powder
4 small sprigs fresh rosemary, the needles chopped, plus a little extra for garnish
½ cup dry Marsala
1 teaspoon Spanish sherry vinegar
½ pound Fontina Valle d’Aosta cheese, sliced

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in ½ cup of warm water. Add the honey and the tablespoon of olive oil, give it a stir, and then let sit until the yeast is foamy, about 8 minutes.

Add half of the flour and the salt, stirring it into the yeast. Add the remaining flour, and then gradually add about ¾ cup of tepid water, mixing until you have a soft, sticky, ragged ball of dough.

Flour a work surface, and turn the dough out onto it. Knead, adding little sprinklings of flour when necessary to prevent sticking, until the dough is smooth, about 8 minutes. Cut the dough in half. Pour a little olive oil into two large bowls, and drop a dough ball into each one, coating the dough lightly with the oil. Cover and let rise until the dough has doubled in size, about 2½ to 3 hours.

In a large skillet, heat the two tablespoons of olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the onions, salt, black pepper, the sugar, the allspice, and the rosemary. Sauté slowly until the onions start to turn golden, about 15 minutes. Now add the Marsala, and let it slowly boil away until the onions are moist but there’s no obvious liquid in the skillet. Add the vinegar and give it a good stir.

Put your pizza stone in the oven, and turn the heat up as high as it will go. Preheat for at least 15 minutes.

Flour a work surface, and turn out one of the dough balls onto it. Flatten it down with your hands to form a disk. Now roll it out into an approximately 10- or 11-inch round (it can be a little free-form, as in the photo above). Scatter an ample amount of corn meal or semolina on your pizza peel, and then transfer the dough over to the peel. Top with half of the onions, spreading them out to about an inch from the edge of the dough, and then place the Fontina on top. Scatter on a little of the fresh rosemary, and add a few grindings of fresh black pepper. The faster you do this, the less likely  your dough will start to stick. Gently slide the pizza onto the stone, ideally in one swift movement (when you get choppy and hesitant about it, you will run into trouble).

Bake until it’s lightly charred on the edges and bubbling in the center, about 12 to 15 minutes. Make another pizza in the same manner.