Thursday 18 March 2010

White Sauce Pizza

I know, it's an abomination, but I've been working on "white sauce pizza". As I see it currently (subject to change), there are 3 (count 'em) methods of pizza construction: (1) red sauce (2) white sauce (3) no sauce. The typical american pizza is of course #1. Escarole and caper is an example of #3. So, what about #2? Well, it all starts with salsa besciamella (a.k.a. bechamel). So, it follows the following "rule": 2:2:1 --- 2 T butter, 2 T flour and 1 cup of milk. A whisk is a good accessory here. It's also important to keep the heat low so that the butter doesn't brown and the flour doesn't toast (this isn't a cajun roux after all). I add parmesan and romano cheese to the finished product. The last step is to add the vegie (last experiment involved swiss chard and carmelized onions). It was tasty but I thought it had a few faults: (a) the sauce should be thick --- if it's too loose, it will be too wet and so will the pizza. Which leads me to (b) Perhaps a light coating of olive oil would prevent the dough from getting excessively soggy. Other toppings I've done with a white sauce include baby artichokes with pancetta (a power combination if there ever was one).

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