Cooking School: Pizza

Pizza is a bit of an enigma. It can be gourmet, or delivered in a cardboard box within 30 minutes. It can be wood-fired, or come chugging along from under a conveyor belt oven. It can be a humble Neapolitan pie or topped with luxurious ingredients like caviar and smoked salmon. It can have a buttery, deep-dish Chicago-style crust or a super-thin, crispy style dough.

Two things are for certain, then. First, that pizza is a staple in today’s cuisine no matter how you slice it. And secondly, there are as many ways to make a pizza as there are to mess it up.

If there’s anyone to educate the masses about pizza, it’s the chef at Miradoro. The restaurant sits at Tinhorn Creek Vineyards in Oliver, BC. Its market cuisine menu has a serious Mediterranean influence, drawing inspiration from countries like Italy —  where pizza is so ingrained, there are laws in place to safeguard the traditional Italian pie. Miradoro executive chef Jeff Van Geest prepares pizza in the classic Neapolitan style at the restaurant, including the basic margherita, vongole (white cream and clams), rucola (arugula pesto and proscuttio) and pancetta (with Italian bacon)

“I love the fact that pizza is a whole meal all in one. It's the original fast food, “ he says. “I love that it is a staple street food, yet has a protected designation of origin. It can be taken very seriously, or eaten to soak up the alcohol after a night of drinking.”

He recommends using a simple, fresh tomato sauce made from San Marzano tomatoes and salt. San Marzano tomatoes are praised for their much thicker fruit with fewer seeds and stronger, more sweet and less acidic taste, which makes them the number one sauce-making tomatoes for many chefs.

As for the tools of the trade, Van Geest recommends a simple peeler and a pizza stone.

His tip for the perfect Neapolitan-style pizza, is not to overload it with garnishes. “It is a minimalistic pizza that’s all about the dough and quality of ingredients.” Though he won’t share his top-secret recipe, he did pass along this classic Neapolitan method.

Ingredients

1 litre cold water (filtered is best)

1.5 kg "00" flour (all purpose if you can’t find "00" at an Italian grocer)

50 g kosher salt

1/2 Tbsp active dry yeast

25 mL olive oil

Directions

Mix all the ingredients in a mixer for about 10 minutes or until the dough is smooth and elastic. Form into 250 gram balls and place in a covered, airtight bin, allowing 3 inches between dough balls for proofing. Refrigerate for 2 or 3 days. Remove from the fridge an hour before using. Shape and build your pizzas and bake at as high of a temperature as your home oven will allow.

Generally, Italians will drink beer with pizza, says Van Geest. “But if you wanted to pair wine, a nice Chianti or Barbera would do the job well.”

Try out one of these recipes:

Mario Batali's Pizza Margherita

DKM's Chicago-Style Pizza

Jeff Varasano's NY Pizza