My fellow colleagues/truants and I dove into the hyper-seasonal, vegetable-driven menu with the zeal of sun-starved non-Californians, ordering nearly everything and eating like it was our job, because it is. There were some very lovely salads done with the sort of insouciant minimalism that put California cuisine on the map, a few astonishingly delicate handmade pastas, and the star of the show, Gjelina’s famous Neapolitan-style pizzas. All floofy, charred edges, they were topped with things that made me, a former pizzaiola, swoon. The bold anchovy, roasted tomatoes, and smoked mozzarella pie was so impressive that I picked up a copy of then chef Travis Lett’s 2015 Gjelina cookbook on my way out the door.
I’ve used that book a lot in the intervening 10 years. While the restaurant’s street cred has perhaps waned a little since Lett’s departure, the pies are still flying off the menu and the book holds some solid lessons in how to cook. But… (you knew there was a but) the recipes are kind of a lot. Lett chose to write the book in a way that tells readers exactly how they do things in the restaurant, where a dedicated kitchen staff spends hours prepping the pickles, confit vegetables, sauces, and infused oils that make Gjelina’s food taste so distinctively delicious. While I admire the transparency and flavors the effort yields, all that prep work is a pain in the patoot to create at home.
Take the pizza chapter, for instance.
The dough alone requires at least 27 hours to make. Lett writes in the headnote that the recipe is among the simplest he’s ever worked with. Good Lord above, where was he making pizza before, the French Laundry? He starts with fresh yeast, which is only available at restaurant supply stores (in large bricks, no less) and doesn’t explain why you would need to use that versus active dry yeast, which is much easier to find. Just a quick calculation and he could have converted the recipe so it was easier to use for home cooks. A cookbook is meant for home cooks, right?
The recipe calls for two types of flour — low-gluten, fine-milled imported Italian Antimo Caputo 00 flour and higher-gluten King Arthur’s Sir Galahad bread flour. That’s fine if you have both flours knocking around in your cupboards (hint: neither will be at your local grocery store). I have found that using 00 fine-milled flour from a domestic source (Bob’s Red Mill #FTW) makes for a lovely pizza crust with nice bubbly pockets, a crispy bottom, and perhaps not quite the chew of Lett’s recipe, but close enough to get the Neapolitan pizza idea across.
Restaurants use a low-yeast, slow-fermented dough not just because it helps the flavor and texture of a finished crust, but also because they are making large batches ahead of time and can let the dough rise over a day or two in the fridge until it’s needed. Lett’s recipe requires two fermentations, the first of which is at warm room temperature until the dough has risen to 50 to 75 percent of its original volume, about three hours. It’s a hell of an ask for a home cook to suss out the volume in such terms. I stared at the dough for so long trying to figure out what 75 percent relative volume was that I had a very unpleasant algebra class flashback. Also, Lett writes that the temperature of the room should be 80 degrees during this initial bulk rise, but unless you live in Southern California or are making this pizza in August without AC, you are apparently f**ked.
Next, the dough is risen slowly for one to two and a half days in the refrigerator. The recipe then goes on for a page about how to divide the dough and form it into taut balls, only to rise it again for a bafflingly wide time window (one and a half to three hours). After that, the dough balls are dunked in another blend of semolina and all-purpose flours, stretched by hand (NEVER with a rolling pin, but Lett doesn’t say why). And at the end of all this dense and confusing prose comes this tidbit about the dough: “If it is superelastic [sic], then the dough probably has not proofed enough. If the dough is supersoft [sic] and tears easily, it has proofed too much.” That didn’t inspire much confidence. It also doesn’t guide you on what to do in either of these scenarios.
All of this is to say that I found the dough recipe to be excessively fiddly and time-consuming, and that the dough it yields is sticky and hard to handle. It also tastes pretty good but looks nothing like the photo in the book. Eventually I gave up on Lett’s method and came up with a single-rise, single-flour dough that is ready in just under two hours.
As for the toppings, the base of my favorite Gjelina pie is not tomato sauce but tomato confit, a sub recipe wherein you roast 3 pounds of blanched and peeled Roma tomatoes for four hours with garlic, herbs, and 2 cups of olive oil. For one pizza, you’ll need ⅓ cup of said confit tomatoes and all that oil is collateral damage. They’re delicious, and you should make the recipe sometime when you’ve got a ton of tomatoes and even more time, but do you know what else works? Roasting just 1 pound of smaller Campari tomatoes with garlic, herbs, and just ½ cup of oil in the oven as you are heating up the pizza stone. In just 45 minutes to an hour, the tomatoes will let go of their juices, intensify to a lovely sweetness, and their skins will crinkle and come away from the flesh as easy as plucking daisy petals.
Ditto for the roasted red bell peppers. The cookbook has you flip to another sub recipe and grill the peppers over a charcoal fire, gas fire, or in a cast-iron grill pan indoors (which takes a very long time and is not recommended by yours truly). You’re better off setting the peppers over a gas flame on the stove or baking halved peppers skin-side up for 30 minutes in a 400-degree oven. You could also just open a jar of roasted peppers, but if you do I recommend the meaty intensity of roasted piquillo peppers. Thankfully they’re getting easier to find in grocery stores.
So that leaves us with the cheese. The recipe calls for fresh, smoked mozzarella. Sadly, the only version I could find melts to the consistency of hot snot in a milky puddle and tastes like a campfire. I now use plain fresh mozzarella (blotted thoroughly with paper towels to remove excess moisture) along with a sprinkle of grated scamorza, a lightly smoked semi-firm cow’s milk, for a subtle, smoky twang.
As for the anchovies, I suspect that people who don’t like them may only be familiar with the skinny inferior canned fishies that are thrown on lesser Caesar salads as an afterthought. I’m not sure why the book’s recipe recommends salt-packed anchovies —maybe they taste better — but after leaving four different gourmet shops empty-handed, I couldn’t tell you. I use Ortiz Spanish anchovies that come in a small glass jar affixed with a tiny bonus fork. They are meaty, firm, and have a buttery flavor that makes anchovy pizza well worth the fish breath.
Finally, Lett instructs you to sprinkle the finished pizza with Sicilian dried oregano, because oregano with fewer food miles simply would not do. I can’t say I could really taste the difference, so now I just use what I’ve got on hand.
In the end, I’ve developed a recipe that is admittedly a distant homage to the stellar pie I had at Gjelina. That’s because even when I followed the Gjelina recipe to the letter, I never got a pizza like the one in the book’s photo with the bubbly charred crust, perhaps because my oven can’t get up to 800 degrees like the restaurant’s purpose-built pizza oven. So I opted to create a doable pizza recipe with a crisp crust and bold, savory toppings that takes a little less than two hours. It’s a pie I make frequently. With the 25 ½ hours I save, I have time to hold down a job and make the velvety butterscotch pot de crème with salted caramel recipe in the back of the Gjelina cookbook, which never fails to make my life instantly better.
Two-Hour Anchovy and Roasted Pepper Pizza Recipe
Adapted from Gjelina: Cooking From Venice, California
Makes 2 (10-inch) pizzas, serves 2 to 4
Ingredients:
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 cup warm water (70-75 degrees)
2 tablespoons plus 1 ½ teaspoons olive oil, divided
3 cups (384 grams) Bob’s Red Mill 00 flour, plus more for dusting
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 to 3 tablespoons polenta or semolina flour
6 ounces fresh mozzarella, torn into pieces (⅔ cup) and patted dry with paper towels
½ cup grated scamorza cheese or low-moisture smoked mozzarella cheese
1 cup Quick Roasted Tomatoes (see recipe below), skins discarded, flesh torn into ½-inch chunks
½ cup jarred, sliced roasted piquillo peppers or roasted red bell peppers, patted dry with paper towels
10 good-quality oil packed anchovies
½ to 1 teaspoon dried oregano
Instructions:
Step 1: Put a pizza stone on a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Bake the tomatoes (if using) as the oven heats up (see sub recipe below).
Step 2: Make the pizza dough. In a measuring cup, combine the yeast and water and set aside for 5 minutes until creamy and a little puffy looking. Add 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and stir to combine. Combine the flour, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl (if kneading by hand). Add the yeast-water mixture and mix on low speed (2) with the dough hook until the dough comes together into a smooth, stretchy dough, 4 to 5 minutes. To test if it’s got enough gluten development, try the window pane test; if the dough is developed, you should be able to stretch a small amount of dough between your fingers until it is almost see-through at the thinnest point without tearing. If kneading by hand, dust a work surface with as little flour as possible and knead until smooth and stretchy, 5 to 8 minutes. The wetter the dough, the crisper the crust will be.
Step 3: Let the dough rise. Rub the remaining 2 teaspoons of oil in a large bowl, add the dough, cover, and set aside next to the oven until the dough is puffy and nearly doubled in size, 1 to 1 ½ hours, depending on the temperature in your kitchen. If you’re not sure if it’s ready, try the poke test.
Step 4: Stretch the pizza dough using the steering wheel method. Divide the dough in half. Leave one piece in the bowl, covered. Put the other on a lightly floured surface and gently press down the center of the dough to create a fat disc. Gently stretch the dough into a small round with your fingers, leaving ½ inch of the edges untouched to create a puffy edge. Pick up the dough near the edge, letting the rest hang down and continuing to leave a half-inch of the edge untouched. Gently pinch the dough while rotating it until it is stretched to about 10 to 12 inches in diameter. Gravity will help stretch the dough and rotating it while you work ensures you get a round-ish shape.
Step 5: Sprinkle a pizza peel or the back of a baking sheet with a four-finger pinch of polenta or semolina; the coarseness will act like ball bearings and make it extra easy to slide the dough from the peel onto the pizza stone in the oven. Transfer the dough to the pizza peel, making sure it isn’t sticking anywhere. Carefully arrange half of the tomatoes over the dough, followed by half the cheese, peppers, and anchovies Don’t let any toppings get on the peel or the dough may stick.
Step 6: Open the oven and transfer the pizza to the stone by putting the front edge of the peel very close to the stone. Using a decisive jerking motion, quickly slide the pizza onto the stone, almost as if you were pulling a tablecloth out from under a fully laid dining table. Bake, rotating the pizza once for even browning, until the crust is crisp underneath, the edges are deeply browned in places, and the cheese is bubbly, 10 to 12 minutes. Using the pizza peel, transfer the pizza to a large cutting board. Sprinkle with half of the oregano and drizzle with 1 ½ teaspoons of olive oil (or the oil used to bake the tomatoes), cut into wedges, and serve immediately.
Step 7: Let the pizza stone heat up again for 15 minutes. Make the second pizza with the remaining dough and toppings.
Quick Roasted Tomatoes Recipe
Makes about 1 cup, enough for two pizzas
Ingredients:
1 pound medium-size Campari tomatoes, halved
2 large garlic cloves, sliced
1 teaspoon oregano
¼ teaspoon thyme
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 pinch chile flakes
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Instructions:
Step 1: Prepare the tomatoes. Poke the seeds out of the tomatoes and discard. Place the tomatoes cut side up in an 8-by-11-inch baking dish (or any other baking dish that can fit the tomatoes in an even layer). Tuck a slice of garlic into each tomato half. Sprinkle with the oregano, thyme, sea salt, and chile flakes. Pour the olive oil over the top.
Step 2: Bake the tomatoes. Put a piece of foil loosely over the baking dish and place it on the center rack of a cold oven, on the rack above the pizza stone. (Do not put the baking dish on the pizza stone itself or it will prevent the stone from preheating properly.) Set the oven to 500 degrees and bake until the tomatoes are collapsed and smell amazing, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Remove from the oven, uncover, and let cool for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove the center rack from the oven to make it easier to slide the pizzas into the oven.
Step 3: When the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, pull off their skins and discard. Place the tomatoes and garlic in a bowl and break them up with a spoon into large chunks, then set aside until you need them. Reserve the olive oil left over in the baking dish to drizzle on the pizzas. Any remaining oil can be kept in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to one week.
Dina Ávila is a photographer living in Portland, Oregon.
