Name: Nancy Silverton’s Pizzette alla Benno with Speck and Pineapple: Your New Favourite “Hawaiian” Pizza
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 2 min
Total time: 17 min
Yield: Two 4-ounce (115 grams) dough balls for 6-inch (15-centimetres) pizzettes

Nancy Silverton’s Pizzette alla Benno with Speck and Pineapple: Your New Favourite “Hawaiian” Pizza

While we’re definitely fans of the classic Hawaiian pizza here at Ooni — such big fans we created International Hawaiian Pizza Day — Nancy Silverton is a proponent of doing things the more traditional way. With her background in Italian cuisine, and as the owner of celebrated restaurants such as Pizzeria Mozza, and Osteria Mozza (which specialise in more upscale and classic-leaning Italian dishes), it makes sense that she doesn’t dig the Canadian bacon and canned pineapple combination.

But someone very close to her heart (her son, Ben) loved it. Being the innovative chef that she is, she found a way to fuse the two styles into something simultaneously familiar and refined. In her 2011 book, “The Mozza Cookbook,” Nancy explains, “When I opened up my own pizzeria, I wanted to come up with a pizza using similar ingredients that would please both Ben and me.”

That meant ditching thick-cut Canadian bacon and soggy pineapple. Instead, she uses paper-thin, mandoline-sliced pineapple that caramelises in the oven alongside speck, a strongly-flavoured, cured ham, and jalapeños to offset the sweet fruit with their heat. The result is a complex pizza that’s light, smoky, sweet and spicy, then finished off with a drizzle of olive oil, flakes of sea salt and fresh chives.

Built on a base of Nancy’s pizza dough and her passata di pomodoro sauce, it all adds up to something near impossible to resist. We’re pretty sure you’ll love this pizza as much as Nancy and Ben do, if not more.

Difficulty

Servings

Two 4-ounce (115 grams) dough balls for 6-inch (15-centimetres) pizzettes

Prep Time

15 minutes

Cook Time

60 to 90 seconds

By Nancy Silverton

Note

For your pineapple slices, be sure to cut the skin (but not the core) off before slicing the pineapple on a mandoline (we love the classic Japanese Benriner model found in most restaurant kitchens), to get about 57 grams. If you don’t have a mandoline, you can still get super-thin slices using a sharp chef’s knife, it will just take longer and they’re less likely to be uniform.

Method

1. Prepare the dough according to Nancy’s Pizza Dough recipe.

2. Fire up your pizza oven, aiming for 370 to 425 °C on the stone baking board inside.

Use an infrared thermometer to quickly and accurately check the temperature in the middle of your stone.

3. Place a 115-gram (4-ounce) dough ball on your lightly-floured work surface.

Push the air from the centre out toward the edge using your fingertips. Stretch the dough out to a 6-inch (15 centimetre) round, then lay the stretched dough onto a pizza peel dusted with semolina.

4. Brush the dough with olive oil and season the entire surface with salt.

Ladle or spoon sauce onto the centre of the dough and use the back of the spoon to spread the sauce over the surface of the dough in a circular motion, stopping 2 ½ centimetres (1 inch) shy of the edge to create the crust.

5. Scatter half the cheese over the pizzette.

Lay one pineapple slice in each quadrant, followed by a scattering of 7 jalapeño slices.

6. Launch the pizza into the oven away from the flames, baking it at the maximum temperature for about 20 seconds.

Turn the flames off and continue to bake using residual heat for about 30 seconds (this allows your pizzette to cook without burning). Reignite the flames, remove the pizzette with your pizza peel and rotate it halfway, then place it back in the oven to get a nice golden brown colour.

7. Remove the pizza from the oven and cut into quarters, making sure each quadrant contains a whole slice of pineapple.

Drape one slice of speck onto each piece, then finish with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and chives.

8. Serve and enjoy! .

Serve and enjoy!

9. Repeat the steps with the second pizzette.

Nancy Silverton

Eight-time cookbook author, chef, artisanal bread maker and co-owner of Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles and Newport Beach, as well as Pizzette, Osteria Mozza, Mozza2Go and chi SPACCA, Nancy Silverton has long been an innovative, influential and creative powerhouse. Among her many (many) accolades, in 2014 the James Beard Foundation awarded her with the title of Outstanding Chef in America. You can follow her @nancysilverton.