Quattro Stagioni Sourdough Pizza #BreadBakers

Artichokes, tomato sauce, basil, mushrooms, ham and olives represent all four seasons in this Quattro Stagioni Sourdough Pizza, with fresh mozzarella.

 

Over the years, we’ve enjoyed pizza in a lot of locations but our favorites are always thin flavorful crusts, baked in coal fired brick pizza ovens. Most of these were in Italian restaurants purporting to make authentic Neapolitan-style pizza. Unfortunately, that enviable crust is hard to recreate at home in a normal oven. 

I was intrigued by a recipe I read recently in Super Sourdough (<Amazon affiliate link) by James Morton. where he actually cooks the pizza in a super hot cast iron skillet on the stovetop, then pops it in the oven under the broiler to melt the cheese and finish it off. I couldn't wait to see if it was the crust of my dreams. 

Spoiler alert: It was! OMG. It was so good with amazing flavor and a wonderful crunchy chewiness. 

Artichokes represent spring, tomatoes and basil represent summer, mushrooms represent autumn and the ham or olives represent winter. We love both ham and olives so I refused to choose just one. It is winter right now after all so that’s how I justify emphasizing it with two ingredients. 

Quattro Stagioni Sourdough Pizza

It’s best to make your dough at least 24 hours before you plan to make pizza. This gives the sourdough starter plenty of time to work and for flavor to develop in the dough. The topping ingredients below are what are typical for a four seasons or quattro stagioni pizza. I’ve shared the amounts I used in parentheses as a guideline, but I know some people love their pizzas heaped with toppings and others prefer a sparser pie. You do you. 

Ingredients

For 3 dinner plate-sized pizzas:

3 1/4 cups or 413g strong white flour plus extra for dusting

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

9 fl oz or 266ml tepid water

1/2 cup or 120g fed sourdough starter

plenty of cornmeal or semolina, for dusting 

1 cup or 240ml of your favorite pizza sauce or make mine with the ingredients below. This makes 1 2/3 cups so you’ll have some leftover for other projects.

For the sauce:

3 garlic cloves

1 tablespoon good olive oil

1 can (14.5oz or 411g) petite diced tomatoes, no salt added 

1 tablespoon tomato paste 

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

sea salt to taste

For the quattro stagioni toppings:

canned artichoke hearts, drained and quartered (8 1/2 oz or 240g)

oil cured black olives (20 – about 2 oz or 60g)

fresh mushrooms (6 oz or 170g)

thin sliced smoked ham (7 oz or 200g)

fresh buffalo mozzarella balls (2 – 4 oz each)

For serving:

handful fresh basil leaves (I like to use the tiny ones that grow at the top of the stems. 

drizzle olive oil

crushed red pepper

Method

In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt together. Add the tepid water and the sourdough starter. 

Use a wooden spoon or a Danish dough whisk to combine everything into a wet and sticky dough. Cover the bowl with a damp towel or cling film and then leave it at room temperature for 6-8 hours.

Stretch it and fold it over several times during the rising time to develop the gluten. 

After the 6-8 hours, cover it again and put it in the refrigerator. James Morton says it can be left in the fridge for 3-4 days but it’s best used between 24 and 48 hours. 

Meanwhile, if you are making your own sauce, mince your garlic and place it in a small pot with the olive oil. Cook it gently, being careful not the let it color or, god forbid, burn. 

Pour the canned tomatoes in along with the tomato paste. 

Simmer for about 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add in the baking soda and stir well. It will bubble up as the baking soda reacts with and neutralizes some of the natural acid in the tomatoes. Taste the sauce and add a little fine sea salt, if needed. Remove the sauce from the stove and leave to cool. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator until ready to assemble the pizzas. 

Next we’ll prep the toppings. Drain and quarter the canned artichoke hearts. Smash the olives with the broad side of a knife and discard the pits. 

Clean the mushrooms and cut off any hard stems. Slice the mushrooms. 

When you are ready to bake pizza, divide the dough into three equal pieces. My dough weighed 786g so each of the small pieces weighed 262g. If you don’t have a scale, just eyeball it but if you bake a lot, you’ll find an electronic scale very useful, I promise.

Preheat your broiler (grill) as hot as it goes with the oven door closed or as close to closed as possible, and then start heating a large cast-iron skillet on your stovetop.

I have a pizza peel but if you don’t, use a flat pan without sides (turn a pan over and use the back if you don’t have one without sides) and cover it liberally with cornmeal. Add one of dough balls and use your hands, and extra cornmeal, to stretch the dough into something resembling a roundish pizza crust. 

Add the tomato sauce and then the toppings. Artichokes in one quarter. 

Mushrooms and olives in two other quarters and finally, tear the ham into big bits and drape them in the fourth quarter. Jiggle the pizza peel or pan occasionally to see if the pizza can still move. If not, lift the sides and add more cornmeal till it shifts freely.

Carefully slide the pizza into your screaming hot cast iron skillet. My first pizza tried to fold under on one side so it turned out kind of a wonky shape but it still tasted delicious so who cares, right? 

Cook the pizza on the stovetop for a minute or two, checking the bottom of the crust occasionally by lifting it up. You want brown and crusty, even a little scorching in places but not burnt.

Use your clean hands to tear off pieces of the mozzarella and place them about on the pizza. Turn the stove off. 

Using thick oven mitts, transfer the iron skillet to the oven and place it under the preheated broiler (grill.) Close the oven as much as possible and cook the pizza for a few minutes or until the mozzarella is melted and the top of the pizza is browning. 

Remove the skillet from the oven and slide the pizza on a serving plate and hand it to the first lucky recipient. 

Let them add some fresh basil leaves, a drizzle of good olive oil and some crushed red pepper, as desired, while you get on with cooking the other two pizzas, following the previous instructions again. 

As James Morton says, “It takes the sacrifice of one person to make the family’s pizza, but it’s so worth it. Between each pizza, get your surface back on the stove to heat up to frightening levels again before you slide your next pizza on top.”

Of course, if you have more than one cast iron skillet big enough, you can get this job done much more quickly than I did! 

Enjoy! 

This month my Bread Bakers are all sharing pizza recipes. Check out the list of beauties below! Many thanks to our host, Karen of Karen’s Kitchen Stories. 

• Aglio e Olio Pizza from The Wimpy Vegetarian
• Barley Flour Vegetarian Pizza from Cook with Renu
• Breakfast Biscuit Pizza from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Deep Dish Hawaiian Pizza from Making Miracles
• Dessert Apple Pizza from Magical Ingredients
• Grilled Fruit Pizza from A Messy Kitchen
• Individual Deep Dish Pizzas from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Jerk Chicken Sausage Pizza from Passion Kneaded
• Langallo (Hungarian Pizza) from Palatable Pastime
• No-Knead Thin Crust Margherita Pizza from Sneha's Recipe
• Pizza Empenadas from Ambrosia
• Quattro Stagioni Sourdough Pizza from Food Lust People Love
• Sourdough Pizza from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Valentine's Hearts from Culinary Adventures with Camilla

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all our lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the #BreadBakers home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

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