16th Century Pizza

As some may remember, I participate in a medieval and renaissance re-creation group, the SCA. For a recent event, I tried re-creating a recipe for pizza found in the late 16th century cookbook, Opera di Bartolomeo Scappi.

Scappi was something of a celebrity chef of the day, having been personal chef to several popes. He includes a number of recipes for pizza, none of which look remotely like modern pizza. They are all flat dough or pastry, but there is no tomato sauce. They are mostly topped with fruit or nuts, though one, the 'lady lips' pizza, has a kind of fruit and pigeon sausage.

The one I chose to do translates as 'dry pastry pizza'. It is a loaf of stacked thin sheets of a rich raised dough, so falls somewhere between a torte, puff pastry, and a loaf of bread. It is thin layers of dough, with melted butter, sugar, and orange blossom water in between. Texturewise, it is probably closest to a cinnamon roll.

My redaction references two recipes from the Opera di Bartolomeo Scappi. Both are from Book V. The first, recipe 128, describes the procedure for assembling the pizza. It references a previous dough. Recipe 126 has a recipe for a dough, which is presumably what is referred to in recipes 127 and 128.

128. To prepare flaky pizza, popularly called sfogliata asciutta.
Get a sheet of dough that is rolled out thin and made as the previous one. 
Have a torte pan ready, greased with melted butter, and on the pan put a rather 
thick sheet of that dough, and on that put ten more thin sheets, greased between
each with butter and sprinkled with sugar and elderflower, dry or fresh. Bake it in 
an oven or braise it. When it is done serve it with sugar and rosewater over it.

126. To prepare a twist with the pastry leaves concealed.
Make a dough of two pounds of fine flour with six egg yolks, four ounces 
of breadcrumb that has soaked in either goat’s milk or a fat broth, an ounce and a 
half of leaven moistened with rosewater, three ounces of fine sugar, a suitable 
Amount of salt, and four ounces of butter. Knead the dough for half an hour. 

For this redaction, I did not have elderflower available so substituted orange blossom water. Not knowing how much goat milk to use, I started by soaking the breadcrumbs in 8 oz. but had to add 6 more oz. to get a workable dough.

Recipe

32 oz. all purpose flour

6 egg yolks

4 oz. fine bread crumbs

14 oz. goat milk

3 oz. sugar plus ¾ cup for sprinkling between layers

1 ½ oz. instant yeast

1 oz. rosewater

2 oz. warm water

4 oz. butter, softened plus 6 oz. melted for brushing layers

2 tsp. Salt

2 oz. orange blossom water

Night before, combine bread crumbs with 8 oz. goat milk. Let soak in refrigerator overnight. 

Moisten yeast with rosewater and water. Let stand 10 minutes.

Mix together flour, soaked crumbs, 6 oz. goat’s milk, yeast mixture, 4 oz. softened butter, 3 oz. sugar, and salt. Knead on a lightly floured marble surface for 30 minutes. Dough should be smooth and elastic. Round, place in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and place in a warm place. Allow to rise for an hour, or until doubled in volume. 

Punch down dough, allow to rest for 5 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Line the bottom of a 9” x 3” spring form pan with baking parchment, and then lightly grease the pan.

Roll out a portion of the dough to ¼”  thick. Cut to size with a pizza cutter. Place dough in pan. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar and orange blossom water.

Do the same for 10 more sheets, but roll out as thin as possible.

Bake for 50 minutes, or a skewer inserted to the bottom comes out clean.

Happy Eating!