Thought I’d have another go at Pizza Boscaiola partly because I found it a bit fiddly the first time round but also because I had a surfeit of mushrooms. Whereas in most pizzas the base is spread with tomato sauce this uses a mushroom sauce and yet more mushrooms as a topping. It requires a lot of mushrooms and a proportion of wild varieties is recommended for better flavour. I used Chestnuts because that’s what was in the fridge plus some rehydrated Porcini.
I used my regular 80% hydration dough, or rather, I didn’t. I mixed what I thought was the usual but very quickly realised it was much stiffer than normal. Checked the spreadsheet and found it was an experimental dough from a time when I was doing some work for a guy who was setting up a pizza restaurant and wanted sourdough bases. Like a lot of good intentions, pragmatism kicked in, and the idea was abandoned as too tricky to fit into their routine.
Meanwhile, back home, I simply worked water into the dough until my hands told me it was roughly 80%. Went into the fridge for 24ish hours.
There are several steps to be taken to make the sauce and the topping.
For the sauce, puree about three quarters of the mushrooms in a blender or processor. Gently fry a couple of finely chopped shallots and two or more cloves of garlic in butter and olive oil. When softened, add the puree and cook down to evaporate most of the liquid. Add a little white wine and reduce again. Add some chopped parsley and sage and a little stock. Reduce until thickened. Season with salt and pepper. Cool.
Slice the remaining mushrooms and fry until browned and any liquid evaporated. Cool.
Skin two sausages and fry, breaking them up into small chunks until brown. Cool.
Assemblage and bake: Use your usual method to press or stretch out the base. Heat the oven (300C top and bottom in my case). Bake for 4 minutes and remove from the oven. Spread the base with the mushroom sauce. Top with a layer of the sliced mushrooms and the sausage and finally sliced or grated mozzarella. Return to the oven for at least another 8 minutes (11 in my case) – use your judgement.
Sprinkle with parsley before serving.
This turns out a pretty impressive and different pizza, There are several steps but they are all pretty simple and, if you wanted to, all the prepping could be done in advance so that all that was needed was assemblage and baking while you sipped the odd cocktail. There’s a thought …
