Luke Powell knows pizza and he knows charcuterie – he’s the co-owner of buzzy Sydney pizza diner Bella Brutta, and chef-owner of LP’s Quality Meats, a smallgoods wholesaler that once had a restaurant on the side. Essentially, he’s precisely the right person to show you how to make an entire pepperoni pizza from scratch, which is exactly what he does in his new cookbook, Quality Meats. In the book, he guides home cooks through how to make their own sausages, charcuterie, bacon and other smallgoods, as well as how to incorporate them into dishes. And the same goes for this pizza; you’ll make every element, from the pepperoni to the dough and sauce.
“When my partner Tania was heavily pregnant with our son Frank she was constantly craving pizza, and I was more than happy to get on board with satisfying the urges,” Powell writes. “At the same time we were considering opening another business that LP’s would be able to supply to make it all a tightly closed loop, and we had the lightbulb idea of opening a pizza place. We spoke with our business partners Joe Valore and Elvis Abrahanowicz of Porteño about the idea and – along with Frank – Bella Brutta was born.
“You’ll need to begin the dough 72 hours ahead. The dough has quite a low hydration, which makes it suitable for cooking at around 400°C. If you make a lot of pizza at home, I recommend getting a proper home pizza oven, such as a Gozney. If you’re planning to bake this in a regular oven, turn it up as hot as it can go, add about 150ml extra water to the dough, and increase the cooking time.”
This recipe also requires a few ingredients you might need to track down: hog casing and sodium nitrite, as well as meat minced with a five-millimetre plate. Start several days before you want to serve the pizza, for chilling and refrigeration. You will also need a sausage filler, a stand mixer with paddle attachment, and a smoker or barbeque.
Luke Powell’s pepperoni pizza
Makes 6 x 30cm pizzas
Preparation time: 3.5 hours, plus 25 minutes standing; 3 days for the dough and 2 days for the pepperoni
Cooking time: 2 hours, including smoking
Ingredients
1.7kg pizza dough
600g pepperoni
500g tinned San Marzano tomatoes
Caster sugar, to taste
Salt, to taste
300g fior di latte or mozzarella, cut into 2cm cubes
100g Parmigiano-Reggiano or other parmesan, for grating
Extra virgin olive oil, for drizzling
15g toasted fennel seeds, lightly ground
Pizza dough
1½ tsp dried yeast
600ml chilled water (add 150ml if you are using a regular oven rather than a pizza oven)
1kg tipo 00 flour
27g fine salt
60ml extra virgin olive oil
Pepperoni (makes about 1kg)
Spice kit (as below)
700g skinless pork shoulder, minced with 5mm plate
120g crushed ice
22g fine salt
1g sodium nitrite (curing salt #1)
300g pork fat, minced with 5mm plate
1 metre of 34–36mm hog casing, rinsed of salt and soaked for at least 2 hours
Spice kit
40g milk powder
10g smoked paprika
6g ground cayenne pepper
1g ground allspice
1g fennel seeds
2½ tsp white wine
Method
Three days ahead, make the pizza dough. Combine the yeast and chilled water in a bowl, cover and stand for 10 minutes or until frothy.
Combine the frothy yeast and flour in a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment and mix until just shaggy. Leave the dough to stand for 15 minutes.
Add the salt and oil to the dough and mix until the dough is smooth and elastic, ensuring it doesn’t reach a temperature above 24°C – you can test it using a probe thermometer. Check that the dough is ready by performing a window-pane test: if you stretch it out thinly, you should be able to see the light through it. Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl, cover the surface with plastic wrap and place in the fridge to ferment overnight.
The next day, divide the dough into six 280g balls, place on a tray, cover and chill for 48 hours in the fridge.
For the pepperoni
Two days ahead, make the pepperoni. Weigh out the spice kit and toss the ingredients together in a small bowl.
Prepare the sausage mix by putting the minced pork shoulder, crushed ice, fine salt and curing salt into the chilled bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the chilled paddle attachment. Mix slowly for approximately 2 minutes. You’ll start to notice the mixture becoming sticky and tacky. This is the sign of successful myosin extraction.
Turn off the mixer and add the spice kit, then turn the mixer back on until the spices are thoroughly mixed in, approximately 2 minutes.
Turn off the mixer and add the minced pork fat, then turn the mixer back on until the fat is thoroughly mixed in and you can see small, clearly defined chunks of fat throughout the forcemeat.
Set up the chilled sausage filler. Make sure the horn and seals are assembled correctly so there are no leaks. Taking note of how big the mouth of your filler is, use a wet hand to scoop up an appropriately sized ball of forcemeat and slam it back into the mixing bowl to remove any excess air. Then, as accurately as possible, slam the ball of forcemeat into the mouth of the filler. (Try to get it into the filler cleanly and tightly to push out any air so that you don’t end up with air pockets in your sausages.) Repeat until you’ve used all the mix or the filler is full.
Open one end of the soaked casing and pour in some water, allowing it to run all the way through from end to end to get rid of any salt on the inside of the casing. Slide the casing onto the filler, bunching it up on the horn, and tie off the other end with a knot. (You want most of the casing to be on the horn, with just a little overhang, so the sausage fills from the tied end first.)
Make sure the bench you’re working on is wet – this will allow the sausage to slide around as it fills, mitigating the risk of the casing tearing. Begin to crank the handle on the filler, trying to be as steady and smooth as possible; it’s best to use one hand to turn the filler and the other to gently hold the casing on the horn as it fills and is pushed off. There needs to be a slight resistance to ensure the casing is firm, even and full of forcemeat, but not so tight that it’s likely to burst. Keep in mind that you still need to be able to twist and link the sausages afterwards. Make the sausages around 250g each.
Once you’ve filled the casing, tie off the open end with another knot. The sausage is easiest to manage at this stage if you create a big spiral on the bench. Inspect the filled casing all over and look for air pockets. If you do find any air pockets, they can be pricked with the tip of a sharp knife – the air will then be expelled when the sausages are linked.
Begin linking by pinching about a hands-length down from the knot at the end of the sausage and giving two full twists. You can make the sausages whatever length you like, but there is definitely an appealing look to a sausage that’s the traditional length of around 15cm: it just looks right. You’ll notice that this twisting tightens the sausage and makes the casing fill out slightly. Measure another length and pinch again, this time twisting the sausage in the opposite direction. (Twisting in alternate directions each time will mean the whole thing doesn’t unravel when it’s hung up to dry.) Continue linking along the entire length of the sausage.
Hang the sausages on a rod or hook in the refrigerator overnight, with a bowl underneath to catch any drips.
The next day, smoke the pepperoni. Start a smoker or a barbeque and maintain the temperature at around 80°C. Add wood or woodchips to get a steady flow of smoke, then add the sausages. The sausages are ready when the internal temperature reads 65°C on a probe thermometer; this will take approximately 1–1.5 hours. Chill in iced water, drain and refrigerate. Pepperoni will keep for up to 2 weeks in the fridge or a month in the freezer.
The chilled pepperoni can be sliced with a sharp knife into discs about 2mm thick for pizza.
For the pizza
To prepare the pizza, remove the dough from the fridge an hour before baking. Preheat your pizza oven to 400°C or a regular oven as close as it can go.
Push the tomatoes through a mouli or gently blend to a pulpy consistency in a food processor. Season with a pinch of sugar and salt.
Take one of the dough balls and stretch it out on a lightly floured bench to fit a pizza peel or tray. Ladle a spoonful of the tomato sauce onto the base and spread it out evenly, leaving a border of around 1.5cm.
Distribute a handful of the diced fior di latte or mozzarella over the sauce and lightly grate some Parmigiano-Reggiano or parmesan over the top. Arrange the pepperoni discs all over the pizza, but try not to have them overlapping.
Bake the pizza in a pizza oven for about 2 minutes (more for a regular oven) until the pizza is cooked and blistered.
Drizzle the pizza with olive oil and lightly season with the toasted fennel seeds. Repeat with the remaining dough balls to make six pizzas in total.
Images and text from Quality Meats by Luke Powell, photography by Alicia Taylor. Murdoch Books RRP $55.00.
