Sicilian Slab Pizza

The slab pie is a pizza that holds a special place in my heart. I fell in love with it years ago on frequent trips to Portland, Maine, where it was made and sold by my late friend Stephen Lanzalotta out of the back of an Italian grocery store, and later at its namesake restaurant Slab, which remains open as a temple to it and its creator’s greatness today. Lanzalotta used a blend of bread flour and semolina flour in his slab, so when Cairnspring reached out to me about sharing a pizza recipe featuring their limited-edition Durum Specialty Flour, I knew the slab was it. I have a feeling that once you try it, you will be a servant of the slab too.

Andrew Janjigian, Wordloaf

Prep Time

3 3/4 hours

Bake Time

15-18 minutes

Total Time

4 hours

Yield

One 1200g half-sheet pie, serving 4 to 6

Varietal

Trailblazer Bread Flour

Ingredients:

Dough:

510g water (88%)

60g extra-virgin olive oil  (10%)

30g honey (5%)

116g Durum Specialty Flour (20%)

12g instant dry yeast  (2%)

465g Trailblazer Bread Flour (80%)

13g salt  (2.2%)

 

Pizza:

7 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

½ (28-ounce) can of whole peeled tomatoes (or one 14-ounce can)

1 tablespoon honey

¼ teaspoon sea salt

3 ounces (90g) whole-milk aged mozzarella cheese, shredded

3 ounces (90g) provolone cheese, shredded

½ teaspoon dried oregano

Baker's Notes:

  • The texture of this pizza is very different from other square/Sicilian-style pizzas. It should be pillowy-soft and light as clouds within, and delicately crisp on the bottom—almost like the crust on a fresh, hot donut—not crunchy. That's why it is proofed for a long time and baked quickly at a high temperature, high in the oven, without using a stone or steel. (If you do want a more crunchy bottom, set it on a preheated baking surface and/or bake it longer.)
  • The dough will seem very wet during proofing, especially early on. Don’t worry, it will tighten up after a few sets of folds, and the bench flour used during shaping should make it easy to handle.
  • Much of that thin, crisp, donut-y texture (and aroma) comes from the addition of lots of durum bench flour during stretching and transfer to the pan; it’s almost like it gets “dredged” in flour and then fried in the light application of oil that the pan gets.
  • All that bench flour also helps make the dough easy to stretch and move around without mishaps, so don’t skimp on it!
  • The toppings should be molten and liquid when the slice is hot, hence the use of a generous amount of sauce and a light application of cheese, haphazardly applied in clumps.
  • As Lanzalotta put it, the pie should have geography: tall, mostly un-topped, slightly charred mountains, surrounded by rivers and valleys of molten cheese and pooled sauce.

Instructions:

  1. Dough: Take the temperature of your bread flour with an instant-read thermometer. Subtract that number from 75. Add the result to 75 and then heat (or cool) your water to that temperature (before weighing it out). (The goal here is to get the dough to as close to 75˚F as possible, for optimum fermentation. If yours ends up off by a bit, don’t stress it too much, it will temper as it sits.)
  2. Place the water, honey, and oil in a large bowl. Add the durum flour and yeast and whisk until the mixture is smooth. Add the bread flour and stir with a dough whisk or by hand until the mixture is uniform and no dry flour remains. Cover loosely and let sit for 30 minutes.
  3. Sprinkle the salt over the dough and stir with a dough whisk or by hand until the salt is fully incorporated. Leave the dough in the bowl, or (better yet), transfer to a high-sided, wide, well-oiled rectangular cake pan or casserole dish, which will make transfer to the bench easier when the time comes.
  4. Bulk fermentation: Cover loosely and let proof at 75˚F for 2-½ to 3-½ hours. Fold at 30-minute intervals, for a total of 5 sets. By the end of the bulk fermentation, the dough should be very puffy, more than doubled in volume, and only moderately sticky.
  5. Thirty minutes before baking, set a rack to the upper-middle position and heat the oven to 500˚F.
  6. Pizza: Coat the bottom and rim of a half-sheet pan with refined coconut oil, vegetable shortening, or nonstick spray and then drizzle evenly with 2 tablespoons olive oil. Set aside.
  7. Coat the top of the dough liberally with durum flour and transfer to a countertop dusted liberally with more durum flour, doing your best to maintain its shape if you proofed it in a rectangular container. Dust the top of the dough liberally with durum flour, and then gently stretch and dimple it into a 15- by 10-inch rectangle. Fold into thirds like a business letter, then lift the dough up from its short sides and transfer to the center of the prepared pan. Unfold the dough toward the ends of the pan, then gently stretch it toward the edges. Cover loosely and allow to rest until slightly puffy, 15 to 20 minutes.
  8. Place tomatoes, 1 tablespoon olive oil, honey, and salt in a blender and pulse until coarsely but evenly pureed, 5 to 10 pulses.
  9. Bake: If the dough has pulled back from the corners, stretch it gently again to fill the pan. Spread the sauce haphazardly around the crust, leaving a 1/2 inch border on all sides. Scatter the cheeses haphazardly and clumpily over the sauce, leaving exposed areas of sauce and dough. Sprinkle with the oregano, then drizzle the remaining 1/4 cup oil evenly over the entire surface of the pan, including around the rim.
  10. Reduce the oven temperature to 475˚F and transfer the pan to the oven. Bake until lightly-browned and crisp on the underside, spottily charred on the un-cheesed mountains of the top crust, with valleys of melty, stringy, gooey cheese below, 15 to 18 minutes.

Baker's Notes:

  • The texture of this pizza is very different from other square/Sicilian-style pizzas. It should be pillowy-soft and light as clouds within, and delicately crisp on the bottom—almost like the crust on a fresh, hot donut—not crunchy. That's why it is proofed for a long time and baked quickly at a high temperature, high in the oven, without using a stone or steel. (If you do want a more crunchy bottom, set it on a preheated baking surface and/or bake it longer.)
  • The dough will seem very wet during proofing, especially early on. Don’t worry, it will tighten up after a few sets of folds, and the bench flour used during shaping should make it easy to handle.
  • Much of that thin, crisp, donut-y texture (and aroma) comes from the addition of lots of durum bench flour during stretching and transfer to the pan; it’s almost like it gets “dredged” in flour and then fried in the light application of oil that the pan gets.
  • All that bench flour also helps make the dough easy to stretch and move around without mishaps, so don’t skimp on it!
  • The toppings should be molten and liquid when the slice is hot, hence the use of a generous amount of sauce and a light application of cheese, haphazardly applied in clumps.
  • As Lanzalotta put it, the pie should have geography: tall, mostly un-topped, slightly charred mountains, surrounded by rivers and valleys of molten cheese and pooled sauce.

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