Gayle's Bianco's Pizza

If you have ripe heirloom tomatoes then you have to try this. My friend told me how to make this delicious pizza while we were working out together a few years back. It's her version of a pizza made at a well-known place in Phoenix (I think). I tried it, wrote it down, and make it every year when the heirloom tomatoes are in season. I couldn't find the scrap of paper I wrote it on and had to go by memory this year. I probably didn't get it exactly right, but it was great. No one complained except for my daughter who hates tomatoes. (Who hates tomatoes??) She got mushrooms on her half of the pizza. 

The pancetta is what makes this so good. Salt and oil. It's really delicious and pretty quick to make. It's even quicker if you buy the dough, but sometimes that just means an extra trip to the store, so I've included a recipe for pizza dough here in case you have the time to make it yourself and let it rise for an hour and a half. The dough recipe was from Williams Sonoma and I thought it was perfect. When I make it I try to double the recipe and freeze a batch for the next night we make pizza. 

This makes enough for 2 pizzas. 

Ingredients:
Pizza Dough:
1 Tablespoons instant yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup warm water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Topping:
Olive oil
shavings of parmesan
salt
2 cloves garlic thinly sliced
4 large tomatoes thinly sliced
sprinkle of dried oregano
1/4 pound thinly sliced pancetta

Directions for the dough:
Stir the yeast and sugar into a cup of warm water. In the bowl of an electric mixer or a food processor fitted with the dough hook/blade, put the flour and salt. Mix it to blend. Add the olive oil to the yeast mixture, and add it slowly to the flour with the machine on. Let it finish mixing, and when it has formed one ball of dough, put it in an oiled bowl and cover it. Let it rise for an hour and a half. It should double in volume. 

To roll it out, cut it in half and roll each one out on a lightly floured surface. Because of the oil, it doesn't seem to stick much at all. You can make a round pizza and cook it on a pizza pan or just put it on a baking sheet that you've either oiled or lined with a silpat mat. I have a pizza stone, but I have yet to remember I have it until after I've baked a pizza. Maybe next time.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees while you put on the toppings. 

Directions for the toppings:
Marinate the tomatoes in some olive oil and oregano. Put parmesan shavings and garlic slivers down on the dough. Layer on the tomatoes, salt and pepper. Go light on the salt since the pancetta is pretty salty. Layer the pancetta on top, and bake the pizza until the crust is light golden and the pancetta has browned.