Pizza Fritta (fried pizza crust)

Pizza Fritta is a game changer!

[edit: I described this to email friends as “Mindblowingly food-heavenly crazy crazy wonderfully fantastically ooh.”]

Just look at these beauties! The're delicious as is!
I would love to try spreading some cream cheese on one of these, with smoked salmon, capers and onion. But it's pizza day!


On ABC television's The Chew (original recipe here), there was a little Italian cooking contest, and Mario Batalli along with Lidia Bastianich selected this one as the winner (Congratulations and thank you, Deb Parillo!) Prep video here).

I became curious how a simple pizza pomodoro beat two other fairly impressive looking entries. Sure, frying makes anything taste better, but my reservation was that it would be too heavy. I still had to give it a try.

I made my basic pizza dough recipe, using 2 cups flour, 1 packet of yeast stirred into 3/4 cup warm water for 5 minutes, 2 teaspoons salt, and parsley and italian seasoning, and per Deb Parillo's recipe, a pinch of sugar. I think that helps it brown nicely. Cover the doughball with olive oil, and cover the bowl with cling wrap or a damp hand towel over the top in a warm place. Let it rise one hour or until it's doubled in size, and prepare your frying vessel of choice (cast iron skillet) with 2 cups of cooking oil, getting it nice and hot, about 360F.

I divided the dough into three portions, worked one punched-down dough portion on the table and then in my hands until it was as thin as I can handle, and carefully but smoothly guided it into the hot oil. This is a fairly dangerous step, because the oil will boil up dramatically at proper frying temp. It's going to spatter quite a bit no matter how ninja-fast you are with a splatter screen. Keep your "chef's fire extinguisher" of a giant box of salt close by. I let it go about 3 minutes per side till lightly golden-brown, drained, and repeated with the other two portions.

Figuring we needed to up the ante for these lovelies, I went all out with my favorite fancy toppings: Shrimp, artichokes and purple onion.

While the dough was rising, I grilled 7 little shrimp coated in olive oil and salt and pepper, and also 3 canned artichoke hearts, for about 5 minutes on medium high. Quartering the artichokes, I topped one crust with these (will try freezing the other two crusts) along with some purple onion, mozzarella, and sauce. This went under the broiler till bubbly, about 8 minutes for me. Finished it off with fresh Romano.

This is the most FANTASTIC crust I have ever made, and I've been making pizza dough in ovens for a long time. It's not heavy at all like I feared, it was light and delicate (but structurally quite sturdy). The bite is perfect, a light, satisfying crunch on the outside, everything a pizza crust should be.

Normally there will be some crust left on my plate, but I ate every single morsel, and rushed to get this post made to share with you. This is truly magnificent and you will not believe it till you try it.