I’ve been haunted by pizza. Not all pizza, but a particular pie I enjoyed one night in my favorite Italian restaurant, Mario’s Place, back in my hometown of Riverside, California.
This was a white pizza. The sauce was subtle, with a thin, cracker-like crust.
But what really got me was the meat — in this case, duck sausage, which was seasoned delicately. Each bite was wonderful — the shatter of the crust, the long pull of the cheese, though the taste was too complex to be mozzarella alone, and that savory meat. It reminded me of mildly seasoned pork sausage, but the flavor was richer, unmistakable.
We mostly hung out in the bar at Mario’s, after the main kitchen had closed, ordering off a pared-back, late-night menu. That duck sausage pizza of my dreams only appeared as a special once. Then I waited, desperately, for its never-realized return.
Something about that pie has lingered in my taste-bud database for nearly 40 years. This summer, I set out to recreate it.
I’ve been playing around with homemade pizza for a long time. Not quite as long as it’s been since I had that pizza at Mario’s, but almost. I didn’t get serious about pizza making until 2020, however, when COVID-19 hit and I coaxed my sourdough starter into existence. Bread came first, followed shortly after by pizza.
For a long time, I cooked pizza on baking stones, but about the time I started sourdoughing, baking steels became popular for home cooks. Steel works just like a stone, creating a hot base that helps crisp the pizza bottom and gives it a nice leopard spotting that is a key diagnostic of a well-baked pizza. But what a steel does even better than stone is conduct heat directly to the pie. A stone is just as hot but doesn’t transfer that heat with the same urgency as steel.
Steel elevated my pizza, but I decided I needed even more heat, so in June, I bought a pizza oven capable of near surface-of-the-sun temperatures. And after a couple of months of frustration, I’ve finally worked out baking a pizza with wet, 70% hydration dough, leavened with Sis, my starter, in an 800-degree oven. It cooks fast, no more than two minutes, and that wet dough puffs up like a popover.
Once I had the dough game down, I set out to recreate Mario’s duck sausage pizza, sans the cracker crust, as I prefer puffy Neapolitan. The pie I’ve made is close to my memory, and it is made without sauce. A mix of whole milk, low-moisture mozzarella, fontina and pecorino Romano cheeses does the trick. I add some fresh basil under the cheese so the leaves don’t burn. A drizzle of olive oil finishes the “sauce.”
Along the way, I tried ricotta but found its vibe lacking. I’ve also added a schmear of crème fraîche as a base, which unsuccessfully recreated Mario’s pie, but its tart acidity demands further inquiry.
The sausage has been more elusive. I tried the regular Italian style, browned and simmered in red wine until a sticky glaze formed. Again, a successful experiment, but off target.
Then I recalled that while I didn’t have any duck in the freezer, because I don’t hunt them anymore, I did have a few vacuum-sealed quail waiting to be consumed. I thawed a couple, chunked the breast meat and salvaged what I could from the thighs, added classic Italian sausage seasoning, ground it and seared it up with some white wine.
I barely had enough for one pizza.
While not exactly the pie of my dreams, that quail sausage came dang close. It’s a do-over, and fortunately, opening day isn’t too far off. I’ll be hunting quail this fall with purposeful intent.
That quail sausage also got me thinking, if I replace that schmear of crème fraîche with besciamella, only delicious can happen.