Chris Bianco Pizza Recipe

Almost everyone knows a Margherita pizza, or at least a cheese pizza. For me, that widespread familiarity was an opportunity to exceed people's expectations, to check off the requisite boxes but go above and beyond with optimal ingredients.

Combine the yeast and warm water in a large bowl. Give the yeast a stir to help dissolve it, and let it do its thing for 5 minutes. You're giving it a little bit of a kick- start, giving it some room to activate, to breathe.

When the yeast has dissolved, stir in 3 cups of the flour, mixing gently until smooth. Slowly add 2 cups more flour, working it in gently. You should be able to smell the yeast working. Add the salt (if you add the salt earlier, it could inhibit the yeast's growth). If necessary, add up to 1/2 cup more flour 1 tablespoon at a time, stirring until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl but is still sticky.

Best Pizza Bianca (white Pizza)

Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface. Slap the dough onto the counter, pulling it toward you with one hand while pushing it away with the other, stretching it and folding it back on itself. Repeat the process until the dough is noticeably easier to handle, 10 to 15 times, then knead until it's smooth, stretchy, soft and still a little tacky. This should take about 10 minutes, but here, feel is everything.

Shape the dough into a ball and put it in a lightly greased big bowl. Roll the dough around to coat it with oil, then cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest in a warm place until it doubles in size, 2 to 2½ hours. When you press the fully proofed dough with your finger, the indentation should remain.

Turn the proofed dough out onto a floured work surface and cut it into 4 pieces. Roll the pieces into balls and dust them with flour. Cover with plastic wrap and let them rest for another hour, or until they have doubled in size.

Reverse Engineer Pizza Bianco

The dough is ready to be shaped, topped and baked. If you don't want to make 4 pizzas at a time, the dough balls can be wrapped well and refrigerated for up 8 hours or frozen for up to 3 weeks; thaw in the refrigerator and let come to room temperature before proceeding.

Empty the can of tomatoes, with their juice, into a large bowl. Add the olive oil with the basil and salt (if using). Then, using your hands, crush the tomatoes. Discard any bits of skin, hard yellow shoulders or cores. Let sit for about an hour for the flavors to combine. Refrigerate extra sauce in an air tight container for a few days or freeze for several months.

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, as high as it will go, and let that baby preheat for a solid hour.

Chris Bianco Teaches Aziz Ansari How To Make The Perfect Pizza Dough

Once the oven is preheated, grab a pizza peel and give it a nice, light dusting of flour. This will help prevent the pizza from sticking when you slide it from peel to stone (if you don't have a peel, you can use a cookie sheet or an inverted baking sheet).

Shape 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 3/4-inch from the edges (with a hand-crushed tomato sauce, the consistency of the sauce over the pizza's surface will be uneven). 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 your sauce and cheese aren't quite as salty as you'd like, sprinkle the pizza with some salt. Then give it a very light drizzle of olive oil.

We The Italians

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!We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019.

Hillary Dixler Canavan is 's restaurant editor and the author of the publication's debut book, : 100 Essential Restaurant Recipes From the Authority on Where to Eat and Why It Matters (Abrams, September 2023). Her work focuses on dining trends and the people changing the industry — and scouting the next hot restaurant you need to try on 's annual Best New Restaurant list.

Chris Bianco, 'pizza Yoda,' Is Sharing His Wisdom In A New Cookbook, He Is

Master pizzaiolo Chris Bianco says there's only one thing he won't do at his legendary Phoenix pizzeria: He will never add marinara sauce to his popular Rosa pie. A seemingly simple pizza crust topped with Parmigiano-Reggiano, onion, rosemary, and pistachios, the Rosa was inspired by a trip Bianco took to Liguria, Italy. While there, he ate a focaccia with Grana cheese and sesame seeds and he fell in love with the simplicity of it. In Phoenix, his efforts to recreate the simple perfection of the focaccia were failing, mostly due to the sesame seeds. They just didn't taste the same.

Deciding to celebrate what's in our backyard, Bianco swapped sesame seeds for pistachios, picked a favorite cheese, and added ingredients he knew and loved like red onion and rosemary. Though it didn't taste like that focaccia in Liguria, the pie had similar elements of fattiness, nuttiness, and overall balance that Bianco thought hit the mark. He explains, Sometimes we don't do ourselves or our ingredients a service by emulating. It's like playing a cover song; if you do it the exact same way, it won't have the same effect.

The care Bianco put into planning the pizza is matched by the attention he pays to sourcing ingredients. Except for imported cheese, the ingredients in the Rosa all come from nearby purveyors Bianco has developed relationships with. Although his clientele didn't seem to understand the Rosa at first, it now is one of the pizzeria's top-sellers. He credits its success with the combination of flavors and places: People think there's a secret ingredient or combo, but sometimes things just make sense together. Of course, when the pizza is made in a custom-built oven by a James Beard Award winner, there's also a level of skill and knowledge not accounted for in Bianco's modest explanation. He's expanding too: He just opened a new branch of Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, and will be opening in Tucson this Fall. Below, the elements of the Rosa:

Pizzeria Bianco In Phoenix Was Everything They Said It Would Be… And More.

At the base of the Rosa is the crust. Bianco begins with a simple, straightforward dough without any magic ingredients. He does point out that he uses a blend of local wheat flours from Central Milling in Utah and Hayden Flour Mill in Phoenix. These are strong protein-rich flours, which ultimately give the crust chew. The wheat flours also add a nutty flavor to the crust. Along with water, the flour is mixed with fresh yeast, sea salt, and a bit of yesterday's dough. Calling salt romantic, Bianco explains that lately he's been using a Mexican sea salt along with Pacific sea salts. He has also been using salt from a cave in Arizona. Careful to be gentle with the dough, Bianco lets it temper before he ferments it for 18 - 20 hours in a refrigerator. The long, cold fermentation builds flavor in the crust.

In the custom-built, 800F wood-burning oven, the crust cooks until it is charred and slightly bubbled. In the oven, Bianco uses local woods like pecan and red oak, noting that in Arizona there's no lack of dry-ass wood. He finds that the size, cure, and dryness of the wood impact the pizza more than the varietal. The pecan wood he most often uses adds a subtle flavor to the pizza, but certainly not the kind of big, smoky flavors that cooking with something like mesquite might. When it first enters the intense heat of the oven, the crust expands. When it's reached the point where it can't expand any further, Bianco moves it to a cooler part of the oven to finish. He estimates the

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