Pizza Bianca is a Crispy, Airy Flatbread

Hey friends, it's Martin. We're in the studio today and we're making Pizza Bianca. This is a classic Roman flatbread. It's got a nice yellow crumb, a long fermentation, tons of flavor packed in this, and much easier than you would think. Come along for the recipe. The link's right down there in the description. Some of you may be thinking that I'm gonna make a pizza with white sauce on it, but that's not what this is. This is a classic Roman flatbread, often eaten plain or sometimes cut open and then eaten with something like mortadella and a soft cheese or something like that. So we're basically making this beautiful dimpled flatbread today. For the mix, I'm gonna start in the bowl with the all-purpose flour and then I'm gonna add some semolina. The all-purpose is giving us tenderness, the semolina is bringing a little bit of texture and also some beautiful color. So the rest of my dry ingredients into the bowl, a small amount of yeast. It's a very small amount of yeast because think about it, this dough is gonna rise for a very long time, overnight and so we don't need a lot of yeast and then salt in there as well. A quick stir to combine just to get your dry ingredients distributed and then I'll go in with my water. Now I'm just going to stir to combine. It's a very sticky dough. If you don't mix it and let it be a sticky dough, it won't be open after the bake. We wanna have a nice bubbly, open structure to it and water is one of the tools in addition to time and good fermentation that's gonna support that. Now this dough is gonna sit and we're gonna give it two folds over the course of a couple hours. You can leave it in the bowl and that's perfectly fine as long as you cover it and then you could put the bowl into the fridge for the overnight. However, my preference is to put it in a container that's got a lid that comes with it. So little drizzle of olive oil in the container and then maybe I just make sure that it's on the sides because this dough is gonna grow significantly and we'll put it into my two quart container. I just wanna take a second and show you how soft this dough is and how little strength it has. You know how we talk about like the windowpane test? This is obviously the other end of that spectrum. An incredibly weak dough, a very wet dough, it has no elasticity and basically very little strength. But during time and folds and fermentation, it's gonna gain a lot of strength. So cover it, set a 30 minute timer or so and come back and we'll fold it. So the dough's had about 30 minutes and as I always say, there's some flexibility there. It's just hanging out doing what it loves, you know? It's just growing so don't fret too much if it's been longer than that or if it's been a little bit less than that. Before when I tried to pull it and it just broke, now it's become something that's beautifully stretchy. And so I'm gonna do this bowl fold. It's not in a bowl but maybe we'll call it a container fold, whatever you want. I'm working my way around the outside of the dough, stretching and then pressing in the center to adhere. And I'm not really counting. I'm just going until the dough feels tensioned and feels like it sort of won't stretch as much anymore. And then once I get there, I just turn it over, seam side down into the bowl and good to go. So now the dough can sit for an hour to two hours or so. Like I said, be flexible, put a lid on it and put it in a comfortable spot. We'll come back and fold it one more time before we put it to sleep for the night. Okay, I'm back to this dough and I've given it the full two hours. I'm gonna give it a bowl fold, stretching and pressing, making my way around the dough. And as always, once I feel that it's tensioned, I'm just gonna turn it in the container, put it seam side down, put the lid on and then I'm gonna chill it for 12 to 24 hours. During that period, the dough is gonna continue to rise and in addition to rising, they're also developing tons of flavor. So 12 to 24 hours, we'll come back tomorrow and we'll make the pizza bianca. So I'm working on a, you know, floured surface here. This dough is sticky. So when it comes out of this container, you wanna have a decent amount of flour there waiting for you. We're in that phase of bread making and you'll see me talk about this a lot with everything from baguettes to a lot of heart breads where we don't really wanna be aggressive with it. We wanna allow it to retain a certain amount of the structure that it's developed over that long period of rise. So I want two pieces that are basically even in size. So now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get them into a little bit of a rectangle and now what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna give them a letter fold. So two thirds of the way down and then just gently press to seal. This dough is so tacky on top that you're not gonna need a lot of force from your hands. In fact, when you go to touch it, and I've said this before, just don't touch the sticky side, right? This dough has a sticky side and it also has a floured side. As long as I'm touching that floured side where the dough met the bench, it won't adhere to my hands or it won't quickly adhere to my hands. So I've got my little letter fold begun and I'm just gonna finish it. And that's basically it. I've got a tube or a rectangular sort of situation. Let me do that one more time. Coming down and then going up. Okay, so now these are gonna rest for an hour and a half, two hours, something like that, a long time. And while they're resting, I want them to ride on a bed of semolina. Semolina is finely ground durum flour. Durum is wheat and it's super, super yellow. And don't worry about going heavy on this. We're not gonna waste anything that doesn't adhere to these loaves and you'll see that in the shaping step. So I have my little rectangular sort of package. I'm gonna turn it over so that the seam side is down and I'm gonna place it on my bed of semolina. Place it and give them some space in between. These are gonna rest for about an hour and a half to two hours. Make sure you cover them. If you've got a lid, go ahead and get that on there. Sometimes you can use a plastic bag or another baking tray. Just make sure that they are not drying out as they sit for that long period of time. We'll come back in a little bit and stretch and bake these. Hey, you're rolling. Hello, folks. Hey out there. Hey, it's Martin. How are you? Nice to see you. Welcome back to the show. The oven's preheated. I have a baking stone in there. It's super hot. Looking at these, I can tell that we need a little bit of semolina on top. And so I'm gonna add some and you can be pretty generous here. You know, don't be shy. This dough is very soft. So I'm pretty generous with that. Now, I'm gonna work with these one at a time and I'm gonna dimple with my fingers, pressing firmly into the dough, but not through the dough, okay? And you'll sort of see what happens here. You get these beautiful bubbles. The dough is strong. It's well-proofed. And once I have that shape, now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pick it up and I'm just gonna gently elongate it a little bit. Some of that semolina's gonna fall off and then I move it over onto my parchment and just adjust it a little bit. I want it to be about 16 inches long, which is roughly the length of a piece of parchment and about five inches or so wide. Okay, so one more time. With my fingers, I'm just gonna go down the length of the dough, gently pressing into the dough, but not through the dough, okay? Into it, but not through it. I get this beautiful bubbling. I'm gonna get my hand under here and I'm working with my hand like a paddle, right? You're not gonna wanna use your fingertips here. If you use your fingertips, they might sort of poke through. It's okay if there's a little bit of extra semolina on top. I wanna have a nice regular shape. You don't have to. You could make it a little bit more rustic than that. So now I'm gonna put about a tablespoon of olive oil on each one of these doughs. I'm not gonna measure it. I'm just gonna drizzle it. So I'm just going down the piece of dough like that and then I'll go for the second one here. Just a little drizzle of olive oil. I'm gonna put some coarse salt on top as well. I'm just using olive oil and salt, right? It's simple. This dough, this bread, this delicious thing leans into that simplicity. High quality flour, the beautiful color of the semolina, aromatic olive oil on top and a little bit of salt. Trust me that it's enough. You know, when I was living in Italy after college for a little while, I had the chance to eat this exact bread in Rome over many days and many weeks and what I always came back to and it's really the lesson that I took from my time in Italy was how the simple ingredients, when well combined, are enough. It's enough. I don't need to put cheese on this. You could and yes, it'd be delicious but trust me that this flavor will be perfect if we just eat it plain or if we decide to make a sandwich with it. So enough talking. Let's get this into the oven. Hot, hot, hot, hot. So when these come out, you don't wanna slice into them right away. It's super tempting and I mean, if no one's looking, go for it. That's fine but if you let them cool a little bit, let them finish baking, I think that you'll find that they're crisper in the end. As soon as they're out though, I do go ahead and brush them with a little bit of olive oil. You know, I took these to a pretty full level of color. It's humid these days. In the summer, I bake darker. In the winter, I can afford to bake a little bit lighter while really chasing crispness, right? It's what I want. So it has that Pond de Cristal sort of open structure which is what we want. A beautiful bread can be used a million different ways. This is Pizza Bianca. So don't forget that our recipe is right down there in the description. Thanks for coming along. This is Martin Tucker from the studio saying thanks for joining us. Get out there and make some Pizza Bianca.