Shape the dough as directed and set the prepared dough on the peel. Jerk the peel to make sure it’s not sticking. If it is, lift the dough and dust the underside with extra flour (or, if no one is looking, blow under it very gently). Tuck and shape it until it’s a happy circle.
Taste your mozzarella and your tomato sauce to see how salty they both are and make a mental note of this. Spoon the tomato sauce evenly over the pizza, using the back of the spoon to spread the sauce, starting from the center and stopping about ¾ inch—a fat thumb’s width—from the edges. (With a hand-crushed tomato sauce, the consistency of the sauce over the pizza’s surface will be uneven. It’s inevitable.) Sprinkle the Parmigiano, if using, over the sauce. Let the spots where the tomato sauce is thinner guide you as to the placement of the mozzarella—hit those drier spots with a bit more mozzarella. If when you tasted your sauce and cheese earlier you determined that the salinity wasn’t quite there yet, sprinkle the pizza with some salt. Then give it a very light drizzle of olive oil.
Open the oven and, tilting the peel just slightly, give it a quick shimmy-shake to slide the pizza onto the pizza stone. Bake the pizza for 10 to 15 minutes, until the crust is crisp and golden brown.
Remove the pizza with the peel and immediately add the basil leaves, laying them evenly across the top. The heat of the pizza will wilt the leaves slightly and release their heady fragrance. Enjoy immediately!
Note: This recipe is more detailed than the pizza recipes that follow—you can think of it as a master recipe for assembling and baking pizza.
BEFORE OR AFTER
Most traditional recipes call for basil to be cooked with the pizza, which is totally fine. I prefer tearing and rough-handling fresh basil leaves over the cooked pizza and letting the heat release the aroma. The essential oils from the basil provide a pleasing texture and flavor profile.
For me, the marinara is the most difficult pizza to make, but it is also without a doubt my favorite one. Its minimalism at first glance could easily belie its complexity. The difficulty lies in two factors: The first is a matter of chemistry. Unlike the Margherita, the marinara does not have the luxury of cheese; it’s just sauce, herbs, and garlic, twice as much sauce, in fact, as the Margherita. So it’s saucier than your usual pie, and there is a little bit of a dance involved. You want to hit that sweet spot with the cooking time where the pizza is still moist with sauce but not soggy. The second bit of difficulty also goes back to that no-cheese thing. In a marinara, there are no distractions—there is nowhere to hide. It is a study in minimalism.
And that’s why it is so near and dear to my heart. It is a pizza of ultimate nakedness, transparency, humility, and grace, made with the most humble of ingredients. It is about transforming a few pantry staples into a sublime whole so much greater than the sum of its parts, through an act of sustained focus and appreciation for the task at hand. If I had the pleasure of cooking for you and you said, “Chris, make anything!” this would be my go-to.
Makes one 10-inch pizza
One ball Pizza Dough, rested and ready to shape
¾ cup Crushed Tomato Sauce
A pinch of dried oregano, preferably wild
2 garlic cloves, sliced paper-thin
1 or 2 fresh basil leaves
Extra virgin olive oil, for drizzling
Coarse sea salt
Crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
Position a rack in the lower third of the oven (remove the rack above it) and place a pizza stone on it. Turn up your oven to its maximum setting and let that baby preheat for a solid hour.
Once the oven is preheated, grab a pizza peel and give it a nice, light dusting of flour. Shape the dough as directed and set the prepared dough on the peel. Jerk the peel to make sure it’s not sticking. If it is, lift the dough and dust the underside with extra flour (or, if no one is looking, blow under it very gently). Tuck and shape it until it’s a happy circle.
Spoon the tomato sauce evenly over the pizza, using the back of the spoon to spread the sauce, starting from the center and stopping about ¾ inch—a fat thumb’s width—from the edges. (With a hand-crushed tomato sauce, the consistency of the sauce over the pizza’s surface will be uneven. It’s inevitable.) Add the oregano, pinching it firmly as you sprinkle it over the sauce to activate its aroma. Scatter the sliced garlic evenly over the top. Finally, bruise the basil leaves, tear them (for little nuggets of brightness), and place them in the center of the pizza. Drizzle on a little extra virgin olive oil.
Open the oven and, tilting the peel just slightly, give it a quick shimmy-shake to slide the pizza onto the pizza stone. Bake the pizza for 10 to 15 minutes, until the crust is crisp and golden brown. This is a fairly wet pizza, so it may take a little longer than others.
Remove the pizza with the peel, drizzle on a little olive oil, and finish with a sprinkle of coarse sea salt. You could even dust it with a crumble of red pepper flakes for a slight quickening of its cadence in your mouth. Enjoy immediately!
WILD OREGANO
We use dried local wild oregano in a range of dishes. It’s dried on the stem, and we just crumble the leaves into the pot (or over a pizza), releasing all the intense fragrance and the flavorful oil. Dried wild oregano on the stem from Greece and other areas of the Mediterranean is available from some gourmet markets and online spice purveyors. If you can’t get it, use good-quality dried oregano, but be sure to crush the leaves between your fingertips as you add them to whatever you are cooking.
At the pizzeria, when I sat down to write out the final menu, I wanted there to be a balance of three pies with tomato sauce and three without. At the time, white pies weren’t really common in the States, at least outside the East Coast, where white pizza—typically a rubbery stretch of overcooked mozzarella pocked with scoops of deli ricotta—was a standard in most slice joints. But I had had beautiful white pies in Rome, and had a lasting memory of a particularly killer quattro formaggi—the classic four-cheese pizza—that was rich but not heavy. So at first I thought I’d do a quattro formaggi too. But after thinking about my setup—How much room did I have on my line? How many of the cheeses could I reach quickly as I cooked? And how many great, high-quality Italian cheeses were readily available in Phoenix back then?—I settled on a three-cheese pizza with mozzarella, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and fresh ricotta. Three Italian classics, but familiar to Americans. Three significant textures that work well together and taste delicious: the pliant quality of the mozzarella, the fatty sharpness of the Parmigiano, and the yielding creaminess of ricotta. Then I’d offset the buttery dairy goodness of the cheeses with barely wilted peppery arugula—a bright hit of something green and fresh.
With this pizza—with all white pies, really—the cut of the cheese is of paramount importance, because how you break down your cheese will determine its texture once it is cooked. This pie is all about the subtle textural differences among the cheeses, which underscore the differences in their flavors. You want to tear the mozzarella into cubes that will melt into shreds of cheese that have some chew. For the Parmesan, use the large holes on a box