Recipes

Sausage and Cream Pizza

I enjoy a nice cream pizza, and I have made many variations on the theme over the years. I had never, however, found a good way to make a thick cream sauce without adding cheese as a thickener or trying to reduce the cream over heat before using it… until one of our customers turned me on to the The Mozza Cookbook. Nancy Silverton shared the simple secret she learned in Italy: whip the cream. That’s it. The whipped cream collapses in the pizza oven, but all the air inside it helps the moisture evaporate quickly and turns it into a wonderfully simple sauce.

In her book, she offers a recipe for Fennel Sausage, Panna and Scallions Pizza inspired by her favorite pizzeria in Umbria. This recipe is a simplified version of the same type of pizza.

By Russ Faulk, Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet

One 11 to 12 inch pizza

Ingredients

Directions

1/2 batch White Wine Pizza Dough, about 14 ounces
1/3 cup heavy cream, whipped (I suggest whipping such a small amount by hand using a whisk)
2 Italian pork sausages, casings removed, broken down into pieces, and cooked (you can cook them in a pan over a cooktop or roast them in a cast iron skillet in a pizza oven)
2 green onions, sliced, green parts only

Prepare the outdoor pizza oven or grill for cooking pizza.

Form one dough ball to roughly a 12-inch pizza crust. Depending on your personal preference, place the dough on a pizza peel with enough flour or corn meal beneath to allow the pizza to slide easily — or assemble your pizza on the work surface and then slide the peel underneath at the last minute. Either way, the less time the dough spends on the peel, the less likely it is to stick.

Use a soft spatula to spread the whipped cream onto the pizza. Top with sausage and onions. Transfer to the oven or grill and cook until the crust is done.

Enjoy!