Will Bosworth

Last week, my girls attended a birthday party on the same night as Family Pizza. You know what the means? They were already going to be full of pizza, so I had a chance to express myself through the medium of pizza toppings.

This week was also our first go at a Walden Farms meat delivery: 10-ish pounds of assorted meat things, reportedly ethically raised. (Initial impression: Pretty good. Maybe really good). Long way of saying that I was working through a two pound hunk of ham and had a bunch of very-good ham sandwiches all week.

So, how about a ham-sandwich pizza? I was first turned onto pickle pizza by a Hot Box pie I had in the middle of a snow storm at Bow Market a few years ago. At the time, it felt like a risk but turned out to be a revelation.

For this one, I grated the ham and placed it under the cheese, and put the chopped pickles on top. My wife is not a pickle fan, so only half the pie was fully dressed. Predictably, the unpickled side was a tad overcooked; the pickled side a bit undercooked. My wife said it tasted like a really good ham and cheese panini. I was all around pleased and felt it was worth writing home about.

I cut a bunch of corners: the dough was prepped in a rush; didn’t get to rest as long as it should have; used pre-shredded cheese (gasp). It still turned out: 7/10 for a pizza, so a strong 11/10 on a normal-food scale. The other pizza was plain cheese with anchovies and was also excellent. Fortunately, I left enough plain slices un-anchovied for my kids to top off their birthday pizza. They reassured me that yes, my pizza is better than from the store 🙂 .