Pizza Frita from Mark Esposito for pizzatherapy.com

Pizza Frita by Mark Esposito

This was one of the classic and most basic of Italian peasant cuisine. It was the Sunday night special in the Esposito household. We would do the Saturday routine. Babe and Lou would pack us kids into the car and we would make the rounds to grandma's house and make visits to the aunts and uncles.

On the way home there would be a stop at Montalli's Bakery to pick up a pizza and some bread dough. We would eat the pizza that night. Montalli's was a very simple square pie with a very simple sauce and just a little mozzarella.

The Pizza Frita from Mark Esposito for pizzatherapy.com

It wasn't a thin crust but it was a lighter than air bready crust that was never soggy, simply delicious. Babe would put the bread dough in a large bowl and put a dish towel over the bowl.

The pizza dough would magically rise to fill the bowl. I still remember the wonderful yeasty smell of the raw risen dough. Sunday night would very often be pizza fritta night and it was always a winner. Like I said it doesn't get any more basic than this, put some vegetable oil in a fry pan and heat it up.

You do not want to use olive oil because the oil needs to be very hot, olive oil would start to burn and smoke. Once the oil is hot cut a little chunk of the dough as a tester. The oil should be hot enough to make the dough sizzle when you put it in the pan and the dough should puff up and turn a golden brown in two or three minutes.

The oil must be very hot because good pizza fritta is not in the least bit oily, the pizza fritta should be crispy and cloud light. The thinner you stretch the dough the thinner and crispier the pizza fritta will be, it is all about personal preference as is what you garnish it with. We would sprinkle sugar on the pizza fritta, my Aunt Suzy would lightly salt hers.

The classic traditional pizza fritta was that simple. At the San Genero festival on Mulberry Street in the Little Italy district of New York City you can get Zeppoli. Zeppoli is basically the same as pizza fritta except they use ice cream scoops of bread dough and fry them in a friolater and then sprinkle the fried dough balls with powdered sugar. Pizza Fritta is one of those cross cultural foods. I bet just about every culture on the planet eats some very close variation of this recipe. It is real soul food. Buona appetito!

Pizza Frita ready to be eaten from pizzatherapy.com

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