MTChallenge: Licorice, Beetroot, Eggplant, Burrata cheese and Anchovies Pizza / MTChallenge: Pizza alla liquirizia con crema di barbabietole e pomodoro concentrato, melanzane grigliate, burrata e acciughe

Pizza in a pan logbook. When Antonietta proposed her recipe for this month’s MTChallenge I could not believe it…finally my favourite, pizza! Anyone who knows me personally is well aware of the efforts I have undertaken years ago in the search for the perfect traditional pizza. What they probably don’t know is that pizza pan is a true mystery to me. Even though I am a proud owner of Gabriele Bonci’s book “Pizza”, which was given to me as a gift by my sister, all my attempts so far (very few I must admit) have ended in a big failure. Being totally honest with you I am not a huge fan of pizza in a pan. But a challenge is a challenge, and for this occasion I decided to overcome my limitations and my fears and bake Antonietta’s pizza in a pan.

MTChallenge: Chestnut Honey and Feta Pizza / MTChallenge: Pizza al miele di castagno e feta

Here comes another month, here another MTChallenge. This time Eleonora and Michael, the two minds behind the blog Burro e Miele, threw their gauntlet not with a recipe but with an ingredient instead, and honey it is. Panic. This exact month is filled with work and new ideas, meetings, recipe testing and I won’t deny that such a great freedom within the challenge scares me a bit. In order not to exhaust myself I decided to keep a low profile, a very low one…but always with the desire to test new recipes and enjoy something different. Feta and honey have been a staple of Sunday brunches for a long time now and I’ve been crumbling feta on almost all of my white pizzas in the past years. It seemed to me like a perfect combination. A sweet and salty pizza, bring it on! The idea of putting honey directly into the dough is a winning one. Chestnut honey has a very distinctive taste and the result is pretty good…I already have been thinking of other recipes and I think I will be experimenting next Autumn. For the umpteenth time I want to thank MTC for being such a source of inspiration.

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Pizza with zucchini, lemon zest and mint / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Pizza con zucchine, scorza di limone e menta

Pizza is one of my fixations. The ones who know the baking world are well aware of how this recipe can cause insomnia, stress and nervous breakdowns. Whether it is baked in a pan or the classic round neapolitan pizza shape it doesn’t matter, both variants need some knowledge to come out of the oven as true masterpieces. I don’t recall confessing it, but my infatuation with sourdough started with an obsessive search for the perfect pizza, which began three years ago and perhaps has now come to an end at last.