TWD: Pizza Rustica

 I have to be honest. The only reason why I wanted to make this recipe was because the crust looked pretty in the picture. The entire recipe was suspect to me. It is called "pizza," but it isn't like any pizza I've ever heard of. It is called "rustica," but it didn't really seem like peasant food either. It is a savory dish with a sweet crust--that doesn't fly with me either. I had very low expectations.

I loved how easily the crust came together. I have a love for smooth, pretty dough. I like looking at it, and I like kneading it. This particular dough was very lovely. I think I ended up kneading it far more than required.

I had to think about the filling. I don't do meat, so knew I wouldn't be using prosciutto. I read some of the discussion on the P&Q board, and saw that some of the people who had made a vegetarian version of this dish were having trouble with sogginess. I also saw that people who did use prosciutto had mentioned that the saltiness of the prosciutto was a nice contrast to the sweet crust. I cleaned my refrigerator thoroughly over the weekend, and knew that I had a half jar of sundried tomatoes and a half jar of Kalamata olives. To empty my refrigerator more, I used all of the tomatoes and olives in the filling (chopped). I also chopped up a couple of handfuls of fresh spinach. I mixed these veggies into the bland ricotta, egg, mozzarella, romano filling--it was very pretty filling. Very Italian with the red, white, and green.

The crust rolled out like a dream. I was hoping to actually weave the lattice top, but the dough was a bit fragile for that. Didn't matter-any lattice top looks pretty.

I baked the pizza quiche pie whatever-the-heck-this-thing-actually-is for slightly longer than indicated in the recipe so it would be sure to set. I was a little worried about the edges of the crust burning, and felt too lazy to make a foil collar to protect it. It was alright--it didn't burn. It looks just as pretty as the picture in the book.

And I was very surprised by how much I liked it. It tasted like a quiche in a sweet crust. The crust was fantastic. My stepdaughter didn't like the filling, but she said she would eat the crust plain. She tried to break off all the edges to eat that. I was so glad I put so many olives into the filling (it looked like way too many), because the salty-briney taste of the Kalamatas contrasted perfectly with the otherwise bland filling and the sweet crust. The texture of the filling was perfect. My husband devoured a couple of slices and said he loved it.

Whatever IT is.