Easter meat pie, aka pizza rustica - a pictorial

Easter has always meant baking in our family. Big, meat and cheese stuffed sausage pies and sweet and cheesy spring wheat pies - each required hours of shopping and prep work. We always gave away these pies as gifts to neighbors and friends.
Here, I just make enough for us to eat for about two or three days - these can't be good for you!
The meat pie stems from the Good Friday fast - since we couldn't eat meat on the Friday, we overcompensated with this behemoth on Saturday - and I will be biting into mine just as soon as I finish this post.

First, we dice up around a pound of assorted meats - proscuitto, dried Abruzzese sausage, soppresatta, salami



Then, we dice up about 1/2lb provolone, and 1/4lb mozzarella - the original recipe calls for dried basket cheese, or scamorza, but I can't get it here and I've grown to like this tweak


Combine well


Now, 1 1/2lbs ricotta, drained, mixed with 4 eggs, is seasoned with lots of black pepper, and grated romano cheese, about 1/2 cup, and mixed with the diced cheese and meat mixture


A square pan is lined with pizza dough. We use Stuart Yaniger's recipe, the one before he switched to using tipo 00 flour - it works very well


The pie is topped with another layer of dough - speaking of which - Cindy's foot is visible in the background - I couldn't do this without her, as she is the princess of dough - I get frustrated, but she has the touch, and makes it look so easy.


Bake the pies at 350 f for about an hour, until stuff starts bubbling up through the vent holes - it's a very rustic looking pie. and every cardiologist's nightmare.

Wow, John, thanks for posting this! It's just moved to the top of my "to make" list. (Just don't tell my docs!)

Makes me think of my mother's "pizzagain" (pizza chena). But, oddly enough, she never put it in the crust which means, technically speaking, it wasn't a pizza chena. Perhaps my mother discovered the Atkins diet before Atkins!!

John,

That looks fantastic!! My cousin is a chef and she always makes everyone in the family meat pies similar to yours. I really look forward to them every Easter. Seeing yours makes me want to eat some right now! YUM! Enjoy!

John,

Could you re-post Stuart's dough recipe? I just have to try this.

Richard

Thanks, great report. And very easy to duplicate -- hope my results are as good as yours. Regards, Bob

John,

Could you re-post Stuart's dough recipe? I just have to try this.

Richard

My wife has it in one of her notebooks, and I can't find it at the moment.
I have to wait until she wakes up.

It's just bread flour, salt, water and yeast, IIRC.

I don't have it anymore, either. I think it's in the old FLDG archives.

FWIW, these days we use Tipo Fino 00 with a little bit of semolina blended in. King Arthur AP with semolina also works well. I spike the proofing water with some sugar, otherwise, yeah, it's just flour, salt, water, yeast, and olive oil.

Seeing my mom recently busted up her shoulder, I was given the Pizza Chiena (pizzagaina) and wheat pie duty this year. The pizza looks pretty similar to yours, John, although we use fresh cheese (farmers cheese) instead of provolone. Good stuff!

Here's Stuart's old recipe....hope it works out

3 cups all purpose flour plus more for bench
1 cup warm water
1 tbs sugar
1 pkg rapid rise yeast
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp xvoo

Dissolve about 1/4 of the sugar in the cup of water, then stir in the yeast. Let it proof until foamy.

Put the flour in a big bowl, stir in the salt and the rest of the sugar, then add the water/yeast and the olive oil. Blend together to form a slightly wet dough. Amounts may vary, so don't hesitate to add a little more flour (if it's a too wet mess) or water (if it's mostly dry crumbs). Dust a surface with flour, then turn out the dough onto the surface and start kneading. Add flour as necessary, but be careful not to add to much - it will toughen and dry out the dough, which should always be just on the verge of sticking. Knead until you feel the gluten developing and the dough has a nice bouncy texture - though it should still be soft and tender. Then rub the outer surface with some olive oil, place in a bowl, cover and let rise for 1 -2 hours until doubled in size.

Me again - for this recipe, after the dough is risen we split it in half and roll it out. We use one half for the bottom, fill it, trim the excess, and then the other half tops the pie, and we trim again.
We also use a stand mixer rather than hand knead. Other than that, it's the very recipe I got from Stuart in 2001. It's made us a lot of happy pizzas in that time. Enjoy

The concept of a guy named "Tomasso" getting a pizza recipe from a Turkish Jew is why I love America.

The concept of a guy named "Tomasso" getting a pizza recipe from a Turkish Jew is why I love America.

Just to make it even weirder, for some reason that I can't even fathom, my wife has you mixed up in her mind with Bruce L - so whenever she makes the dough, she'll say, "I'm making Bruce's recipe."

"No hon, it's Stuart. Stuart Yaniger. Bruce L is a lawyer. Stuart is the scientist."

"Oh yeah, right, whatever."

That's OK, last night we had a Jew and an Irishman cooking up Northern Italian dishes for a French girl.

I should probably get my focaccia stuff posted. It's a killer. Literally. 10,000 calories per slice.