Recipe: Pizza del bel paese (Beautiful Country Pizza)

Michele Casale’s winning pizza, Pizza del bel paese (beautiful country), is Roman pizza al taglio, a style of pizza typically sold by weight in Italy.

“I look at my pizza as a plate, I transport the topping on that plate,” Casale says. “When I was thinking about what to do, I wanted to do something simple, something creative with quality ingredients. Each pizza has to have a personality.

“For me the white pizza is the best, better than the red pizza. When I did that white burrata base with sundried tomato, my idea was to make the red, white and green Italian flag.”

Whipping cream with pesto and a little basil on top of the pizza brought the green.

Casale didn’t make this particular pizza before coming to Toronto but he was confident. “I had my vision. My work was to create the perfect foam. It had to balance pesto with the cream. That was my only challenge. The foam was for me important.”

Crust
See our profile of Michele Casale  for details and tips on flour and fermentation

Crust

• Sundried cherry tomatoes
• Burratine cheese (small burrata cheese)
• Pesto (pomodorini seche, burratine e basilico con pesto) mixed with
  whipping cream to create green foam
• Basil