I just love black foods. Maybe because the culinary sadist in me longs to see the shock of modern Americans as grown adults say “ewww” after I tell them what made the dough black or when they take that first tentative bite of squid ink pasta or bread.
Squid ink has been around a long time. Adding it too foods is more of a visual affair compared to a flavor thingy because the taste has only a nuanced taste of the sea.
This pizza is a long Pizza al Metro and I wanted it to be a very wet profile because the squid ink dough best reflects the deep-dark alveoli or cells when it is hydrated and cold fermented a long time. This produces a killer oven spring and blasting cornicione. I’ve always liked a cool vegetal sauce when using burrata, the creamy-centered mozzarella from the Puglia region. On top of these two, I planned my fave: Sicilian white anchovies or Alici Marinati- I covered them ions ago right on this blog here:
I first made a Salsa Verde of cilantro, green pepper, red onion, a few garlic cloves, fresh basil and olive oil with salt and pepper.
Then, I played the dough out on parchment and par heated my oven to over 600 degrees. I layed the sauce thick because of evaporation and blasted this sucker for eleven minutes until the crust rose and the sauce solidified somewhat. Then I added fiore di latte mozzarella from Wisconson and some homemade burrata on top.
I baked the pizza for only a few more minutes to melt the cheese and set the sauce and crust then pulled it from the oven, added the anchovies and cut furiously into the melting mass of black, green, white and silver.
This was a spectacular way to enjoy a squid ink pizza!
The cell structure on this was airy and light and added a nice foil to the cream and astringently seafaring quality of the anchovies.
