pizza failure = roman crackers

As I’ve already mentioned, the other day I finally decided to try my hand at Bonci style pizza at home. I’ve been making pizza for years, but the round kind, cooked in my wood-burning pizza oven out in Todi. Being an impatient kind of person, I never took the time to let the dough rise slowly over night, as Bonci suggests. Also, the kind of pizzas I was used to making were small and round, with a very thin crust. We cook them quickly in our wood burning oven and – I am proud to say – we’ve become very, very good at this.

Which is why my total failure at making Bonci style pan pizza here in Rome was so depressing. I’m not used to failure (I can hear all my friends chuckling. I’m sort of known as a know-it-all control freak). It should have worked out fine. I bought the right kind of flour (Mulino Marino). I even made two different doughs, one for pizza with Tipo 0 and a bit of Segale (Rye), and another Grano Duro for focaccia. I planned ahead, ready to let them rise over night in the fridge, as Bonci says to do.

My downfall was the yeast. Having forgotten to buy any, I borrowed some from my friend Sienna. Now, I’m not sure if it was the cocktail that made my brain fuzzy, or just my total work overload these days. But for whatever reason I didn’t check the date on the yeast. I should have been tipped off by the French label. Sienna’s trip to Paris was a while back. Whatever. The next day my dough was a mean hard cold thing. I couldn’t even bear to look at it.

I got a lot of suggestions on facebook about what to do with it. Doorstops were out of the question. I liked the Matzoh idea though, and so went for crackers.

At first I started rolling out the dough super thin, then cutting it carefully into small, square, cracker shapes. That got boring real fast. Cutting all those fussy shapes then carefully transferring them to a cooking sheet was not fun.

Instead I just decided to roll pieces of dough out, very thin, in long oval shapes and baked them like that. They actually looked sort of familiar, and I realized that you can buy the same thing in most bakeries in Rome, called Croccantino. I wonder if this is a result of bakeries that are as similarly yeast-challenged as me?






Roman Crackers – Croccantino

1 kilo (2 pounds) flour*
700 gr. water (800 ml)
40 gr olive oil
20 gr. salt

Mix all the ingredients well, stirring, then kneading it for about 5 minutes, until it forms a springy dough. Let rest for about a half hour.

Preheat oven to 250c/450f (or as hot as your oven can get)

Divide dough into about 8 small balls.

Roll out each ball as thin as you can, on a slightly floured surface. If the dough starts to seize up, set it aside for a few minutes and try again, stretching and rolling.

For variation, you can sprinkle the dough with pepper, or red pepper flakes half way through, working the spice into the dough. I also used fennel pollen.

Place the rolled out dough onto baking sheets. Poke all over with the tines of a fork, so that dough stays flat while cooking. Brush lightly with oil, and sprinkle with salt.

Bake until they start to turn golden brown. About 8 minutes in a hot oven.

Repeat until you have baked all the dough.

The crackers get more crispy as they cool off, and hard as a rock by the next day.

*I used Mulino Marino Flour, 800 gr. Tipo 0, Grano Tenero and 200 gr. Segale (Rye)