Wondering how to make a white pizza? If you are a regular reader of this blog, you must have already guessed the source of Ricotta cheese for this white pizza. White pizza? Call it keeping it simple, or just lack of imagination on my part. You can also call it Pizza Florentine, if you like. After all, it has almost all the ingredients of a Florentine pizza, except the base of tomato sauce.
I am bored or the tomato-based pizza sauce and there was this one pizza that we used to order all the time. It was all spinach and broccoli and white, no tomato sauce and it tasted wonderful. So I thought I would try to recreate that and get some change from the routine tomato pizza sauce.
Well, that and I had loads of homemade Ricotta cheese. It was so creamy and fresh that I had to make something soon and pizza was the easiest thing to do. And with all the noise about Potassium Bromide and other things in the store bought bread and pizza bases, a pizza from scratch sounded a much better option.
Most of the store bought pizza bases a are too thick. A thin crust pizza tastes much better that a regular crust, and more so when the toppings are simple and without any sharp flavors.
For the Pizza Dough
4 cups all purpose flour (Maida)
Salt
1 tbsp oil
2 cups water
2 tsp dry yeast
Read more about how to make pizza dough here.
White Pizza Ingredients
1.5 cups ricotta
200 gms Mozzarella
4-6 garlic cloves
2 Cups Chopped, sauted (in salt and pepper) spinach
1 Cup Lightly chopped basil
2 Tbsp chopped walnuts
1/2 Cup Olive oil
1 Tbsp red chili flakes
How to Make White Pizza
1. Heat the olive oil for a couple of minutes on low heat and add the garlic
2. Switch off the heat and let the garlic infuse the oil. You can do this a couple of hours before making the pizza
3. Stretch the pizza dough with a rolling pin to form a pie, or any shape you want
4. Brush generously with the garlic oil
5. Place the mozzarella cheese slices around
6. Add the sauted spinach and walnuts
7. Top with bite-sized blobs of ricotta cheese and top with some shredded basil leaves
8. Heat the oven at 230 deg C for a few minutes
9. Place the pizza on a good, heat conducting pizza plate or the crumb tray
10. Place the tray at the top level near the heating coil
11. Bake the pizza for 15-20 minutes. Monitor to check that the pizza base is not burnt
12. Drizzle some more olive oil and serve hot
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