Pizza Bianca — A Sizeable Superbowl Sendup

by A.J. Coltrane

A Superbowl sendup on the Roman “Pizza Bianca”, inspired by this recipe, created by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats. He describes his process here. Here’s the photo from Serious Eats:

A little bit of background:  The Pizza Bianca I’m referring to is created at Antico Forno in Rome. It’s a flatbread about 2 meters long; made with olive oil, salt, and rosemary. The baker scrunches up the dough like an accordian onto a peel, then shimmies the dough out to its full expanse in the oven. The pizza is sold by length, rather than by the slice.

That sounds good to me, though I don’t have an oven that’s six feet across.

What I do have is a grill that’s 24″ x 18″. It’s my biggest cooking surface, and I thought that for the Super Bowl it’d be fun to make a flatbread the size of the grill.

Here are the two formulas, Kenji’s is the “Original” in the center column (Baker’s Percentage definition here):

Weight in Grams	Original	Sizeable
Flour	500, Bread Flour	800, AP Flour
Water	375	544
Salt	10	16
Yeast	5	5
Olive Oil	1/4 cup	3/8 cup
Rosemary	1 TBP, minced	1.5 TBP, minced
Baker’s Percentage	Original	Sizeable
Flour	100	100
Water	75	68
Salt	2	2
Yeast	1	0.63
Olive Oil	10.6	10
Rosemary	1 TBP, minced	1.5 TBP, minced

Kenji’s uses a 75% hydration and an overnight rise, since his is based around the Lahey No Knead recipe. I decided in advance that if I used a hydration that high then I’d be unlikely to get *that* much wet, oily, dough onto the grill without a mishap. I cut back the hydration to a more manageable 68% and allowed for a three day rest in the refrigerator. (My “regular” pizza dough is 60% hydration.)

The recipe:

Use a spatula to combine all of the ingredients above in a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap. Leave the dough in the refrigerator for 3 days in total, folding the dough (in the bowl) a couple of times per day. Remove the dough from the refrigerator about 4-5 hours before it’s time to grill. (If the dough is threatening to rise too much then either go ahead and grill it, or fold it again to buy another hour or two.) Flour a work surface and roll the dough out to into a 16″ x 22″ rectangle.

Arrange the dough so the long dimension goes from left to right. Generously brush both the dough, and the back of an inverted sheet pan, with olive oil. Fold the dough in half (left to right) to transfer it to the sheet pan (see below).

Further explanation:  The 16″ side of the dough (what *was* the short side) goes lengthwise on the sheet pan, the “long” side of the dough (which is now 11″, because it’s folded in half) sits folded across the short dimension of the sheet pan. The “inside” of the dough has now already been oiled. The bottom on the dough is now sitting on oil. All that remains is to oil the new top. Preheat the grill to medium.

To transfer to the grill:  Pick up the dough (still folded in half) and rapidly move it over to the grill, then unfold the dough and carefully try stretch it out a little if it needs it. When the dough stiffens up, shows some color on the bottom, and feels about half cooked then it’s time to flip the monster. I slid a cheap pizza pan under the dough and flipped it over. I used the same pan to remove the finished pizza from the grill — the pan was smaller than the pizza, but it worked ok overall. Hot pads are recommended, the pizza will be lava hot. I used a pizza cutter to score the pizza, to try to make it easier for everyone to tear off a piece. As part of a nice Super Bowl layout this easily fed 10 people with leftovers — it’s basically the same size as two large pizzas, combined.