Pizza Today - July 2023 - 21

H
ave you ever been to
Sicily? The first time
I visited Sicily I knew
nothing about the place
outside of it being the island in the
south being kicked by the boot of
mainland Italy. This was before I had
ever watched The Godfather and right
at the beginning of my pizza career. I
had no clue about the different styles
of pizza, let alone the impact simple
things could have on food culture.
Sicily, to me, is one of the meccas
of street food, and Sicilian-style
pizza as we know it today got its humble
beginnings among the simple people.
Nowadays when you see Sicilian-style
pizza on a menu, it generally means a
thick-crust pizza made in a rectangular
pan cut into square slices. Besides that,
the range of toppings and application of
toppings varies just as much as any other
style of pizza. In addition, like other
styles the line between bread and Sicilian
" pizza " has blurred tremendously with
techniques associated with other styles
blended into it. But Sicilian pizza traces
its inception back to sfincione.
Sfincione, meaning soft sponge, is one
of the OG street foods found in Sicily's
capital city, Palermo. It is topped with
tomato sauce and a mixture of cacciocavallo
cheese, breadcrumbs, anchovies,
onions, olive oil, salt and oregano.
Sfincione is easily found all over Palermo
with different variations existing outside
of the capital city, but mozzarella did not
find its way onto Sicilian-style pizza until
it left its homeland. Mozzarella is not
a cheese that is traditionally associated
with Sicily since cows and water buffalo
are not generally found on the island,
but instead sheep's milk and goat's milk
cheeses are more common. It is hard for
me to call sfincione pizza in that this is
something unique unto itself. Like focaccia
is focaccia no matter what is put on
top of it, sfincione is in its own category
with Sicilian-style pizza evolving from it.
When I first started thinking
about Sicilian-style pizza and how
to define it, I knew I would have to go
to two masters of the style. Their names
have become synonymous with Sicilianstyle
pizza, and their version of this pan
style wows everyone when they try it.
Chris Decker and John Arena have
developed a five-day fermented Sicilian
that incorporates freezing to help
evaporate out additional moisture adding
to the crispy final texture. When speaking
with both Chris and John, they described
their Sicilian as " looking like a brick
but feels like a feather. " Sicilians are
typically one of the thickest of the pan
styles. It normally has a crispy bottom,
is ¾ to a full inch in thickness and has a
moderately open crumb structure. It can
be confusing these days when we begin
to talk about the interior crumb because
the trend right now is big open structure.
Sicilians tend to have a more closed
structure with smaller bubbles but many
of them as opposed to large sporadic
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Pizza Today - July 2023

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