By now I am sure you are convinced that I really only named my blog Licorice Pizza Pie for the pizza. I do thoroughly enjoy pizza. What isn’t there to love? Cheese, bread, savory sauce and toppings? but Really, the pizza part was convenient. A delicious convenience!
A Proscuitto-Arugula pizza is also a delicious convenience. Its basically a cheesy, savory pizza with a salad on top. Or at least thats what my partner and I tell ourselves when we split one. Somehow this became our favorite pizza when we go out to eat. I strongly suspect because we can maybe feel healthier having the salad on top. If a pizza place had this on their menu, 99% of the time we will order it. Over one of these pizzas, while my partner and I were laughing, whispering and people watching, I realized how these small, seemingly insignificant realizations of what makes us mesh are to our relationship. How rediscovering or reminding myself of these, almost like a gratitude practice, are crucial to lifelong partnership. Music is very much like this too. How often do you fall out of love with a band, hear it years later and can’t get it out of your head again?
I wanted to pair this pizza with an album that is mine and my partner’s jointly and is sweeter with each play on the turntable. Closing Time by Tom Waits is exactly this. Every few years I will listen to my collection alphabetically or in reverse alphabetical listing. I’m always amazed that when doing this, I fall in love with an album I’ve always had. Closing Time was this album through and through. It is still one of my all time favorites because of the re-discovery of something that I’ve always known.
Prosciutto Arugula Pizza
Serves 2
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon of whole wheat flour
- 1/2 tsp of instant yeast
- 1/2 tsp of sugar
- 1/2 tsp of salt
- 1/3 cup of water at 70-90 degrees F
- 4 tsp of EVOO
- 1/3 cup of pizza sauce (from the Pizza Arrabiata post)
- 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese
- 5-6 slices of prosciutto
- 2 cups of arugula
- cracked fresh pepper, to taste
- At least at hour before you plan to bake the pizza, mix the flour, yeast and sugar in a glass bowl. Whisk in the salt after (if the salt has direct contact with the yeast i.e. if it isn’t coated in flour, it will kill the yeast). Pour the water into the center of the bowl and stir until the dough starts to form. The dough will look a little rough, won’t be silky smooth. Caution with over mixing, it can make the dough too sticky.
- Pour the oil into a different glass bowl and place the dough it in. Using your fingers, turn the dough over a few times, coating it in the oil. Let rise for at least 60 minutes at room temperature. This is another dough that the flavor will develop nicely if you let it sit for at 24 hours but tasty regardless.
- Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F. If you have a baking stone, place it in the oven prior to preheating it. Another great option is to use a cookie sheet upside down. Place this in when you heat the oven.
- Shape the pizza dough using your fingers starting from the center of the dough and working in concentric circles moving outward expand the dough in to a circle 8-10 inches wide. Place the dough on a floured surface and let it sit for 15-20 minutes. If the dough shrank, using the same motion, expand it once again and place it back on the surface. Let the dough continue to rise until the oven is preheated.
- Bake the dough sans toppings for 4-6 minutes. Remove from the oven and top with the sauce (using a spoon, spread evenly) and cheese.
- Bake for 5-8 minutes until the dough has risen and is a dark golden brown. Because of the whole wheat dough, it will be slightly darker than normal. (see the above image).
- Lay the prosciutto on top of the pizza and top with arugula. Sprinkle with cracked pepper and dig in.
Notes
I usually double the recipe of dough and freeze half for later. I take the dough out of the freezer and transfer it to the fridge 24 hours before I want to use it.