Escarole pizza is a dish from Neapolitan popular cuisine with simple ingredients, easy and irresistible.
It’s a rustic pizza, almost a savory pie, where a shell of leavened dough encloses a tasty heart of escarole, anchovies, pine nuts, and raisins. As with every traditional recipe, each family has its variants, which often include olives and capers in the filling. The result is always a harmony of flavors between the bitterness of the vegetables, the sweetness of the raisins, and the saltiness of the anchovies, a unique and irresistible taste.
Read on to find out how to make escarole pizza with the easy recipe you will find below, as usual, right after the photo 😉
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- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Economical
- Rest time: 2 Hours
- Preparation time: 30 Minutes
- Portions: 8People
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Fall, Winter
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup + 1 tbsp water
- Half cube fresh brewer's yeast
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 2 heads escarole
- 5 fillets anchovies
- 1.75 oz raisins
- 1.5 oz pine nuts
- 1 clove garlic
- extra virgin olive oil
- salt
Preparation of escarole pizza
Crumble the fresh brewer’s yeast in a small bowl, add the sugar, and dissolve everything with some of the water taken from what is needed for the recipe.
In a large bowl, mix the two types of flour and make a well in the center.
Pour the yeast mixture into it and starting to mix with a fork, turning it from the center of the bowl, also add 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and the rest of the water little by little, without stopping to mix, incorporating the flour slowly into the liquids.
When the liquids have been absorbed by the dough, move to a work surface and add a teaspoon of salt to the dough, kneading everything until you get a firm, compact, and homogeneous dough.
Form a ball and place it in a bowl.
Make a cross cut on the dough, cover the bowl with cling film, making it adhere well to the edges, and let it rise in a warm place, free from drafts, for a couple of hours, until it has doubled in volume.Meanwhile, clean the heads of escarole and cut them into strips.
Wash them well under running water, then drain them and put them in a large pan over medium heat.
Soak the raisins in hot water for ten minutes.
Stir the escarole from time to time until the water has dried up (the volume of the vegetables will be greatly reduced), then add some extra virgin olive oil and the peeled garlic clove.
When the garlic is golden, remove it and add the anchovy fillets to the pan, dissolving them in the oil and mixing them with the escarole.
Also add the drained and squeezed raisins and the pine nuts, mix and cook for another five minutes, possibly adjusting the salt, then turn off and set aside.At the end of the rising, take the dough and work it quickly on a floured board, then divide it into two parts.
Roll out the first part into a disk, first by hand and then with a rolling pin, until it reaches a thickness of a few millimeters.
Grease a round pan with a diameter of 12.5 inches and place the dough disk on it, trying to also cover the edges.
Distribute the prepared escarole filling on the dough disk, leveling it.
Also roll out the other part of the dough to form a thin disk that covers the filling and place it in the pan.
Fold the edges of the bottom dough over the top dough disk to seal the edges.
Bake in a static oven at 450°F for twenty to twenty-five minutes.
Remove from the oven, let it cool slightly, and serve your escarole pizza.
Notes
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