Grandma DeGeorge’s Sicilian Style Pizza
In Angelo’s words
When I was growing up, my grandmother lived with us and pretty much raised us. I remember when I was 4 or 5 years old and WWII was in progress. There was rationing, and Victory Gardens, every one did their share and that meant my mother had to work. The big hit in the garden was tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, beans, cucumbers, and roman lettuce, to mention a few. To look at it, it wasn’t very big (area wise), but every inch was utilized and it was prolific enough for grandma and my mom to can enough tomatoes to last us all winter. The world was in turmoil and a victory garden just made things a little easier. The highlight of all this hard work was rewarded with some really tasty meals and of course my grandmothers Sicilian Style home made pizza.
Grandma, didn’t measure anything, her method was to throw a bunch of things together and it always came out tasting great. Her recipe for making the dough was something like a 5 lb. sack of flour, a pan of warm water, (about the size of a quart pan and a little more, a handful of salt (about 1½ tablespoons), a large wooden spoon of lard, (about ½ cup). She would dump the flour in a large white porcelain pan and push the flour to the sides making a large crater in the middle of the pan. Then she would stick her elbow in the pan of water to make sure the temperature was right for the yeast. She then put in the yeast, lard and salt and stirred it together well before mixing the flour in with that big wooden mixing spoon. Yup, the same big wooden spoon that she use to whack us with when we needed to be disciplined and least expected it. When she couldn’t mix the dough with that spoon any more, then she would start kneading it. The recipe below is a smaller variation of that recipe that I have developed over time replacing only the lard and the fresh cake yeast. Of course when she made dough she made fresh Italian bread as well as pizza.
Recipe 1
Grandma’s pizza and bread dough, as Angelo remembered it
Title added by the archive. Angelo gave this recipe no heading.
Originally published as part of Angelo’s introduction to this post. Angelo described it from memory in his introduction, in a single paragraph, with no heading and no list. The ingredients and steps below are his words, lifted from that paragraph unchanged.
Recipe 2
Revised pizza/bread dough recipe
Note: . This should be sufficient dough to make three (3) sheet pizza’s, or four (4) 15” round pizza’s. If you intend to make only one or two pizza’s you might want to divide the dough accordingly into 4 or 5 equal parts before starting the rising process. If so, place each segment in a plastic freezer bag and freeze until you are ready to use it. When you are ready to use the dough, take it from the freezer the day before and place in the refrigerator. On the day you intend to use it, take it out of the refrigerator in the morning and let stand at room temperature until double in size. I like my pizza dough thick, so those of you who like thin crust pizza might want to make even further revisions in the division of the dough.
Ingredients
Method
The dough should now be ready to use. Divide it into four (4) equal sections and dust the cut ends with flour. The dough should feel soft, light and elastic.
- A variation of: Grandma’s pizza and bread dough, as Angelo remembered it
- Used in: Original Toppings recipe
Recipe 3
Original Toppings recipe
Your now ready to put the pizza together.
Ingredients
Note: the lack of amounts, for all of the ingredients above are solely dependent on one’s personal taste and cannot be accurately measured. However the following instructions should help to clear things up a bit.
Method
Well that about does it, but of course you’re not limited to the ingredients listed above. I’ve seen recipes that call for anything from pineapples to marshmallows, but if you want a great pizza that everyone will rave about, I wouldn’t mess with it to much.
Family notes
None yet. Notes from the family will appear here, signed and dated, and kept apart from Angelo’s words.
From the archive
Restored · 2012 capture- Originally published
- , on angelobiondo.com by Angelo Biondo (post No. 26)
- Filed under
- Bread and Rolls, Family Favorites
- Restored from
- Internet Archive capture of — view the original page
- Also captured
- Transcription
Angelo’s words are unchanged, spelling included.
- No capture of the post’s own page exists; it is transcribed from the Bread and Rolls category page, which shows it in full. The posting time isn’t shown there.
- Grandma’s dough is restored as a recipe from Angelo’s introduction: its ingredients and steps are his phrases and sentences, unchanged and in his order. “fresh cake yeast” comes from his last sentences about what he replaced. The introduction itself is kept whole.
- The bullet points of the dough and topping instructions are shown as numbered steps.
- The paragraph “The dough should now be ready to use…” sat between two runs of bullets; it is shown as a note above the second run.
- “Your now ready to put the pizza together.” introduced the toppings and is shown with them.
- Open questions
Left exactly as published, for the family to confirm.
- Grandma’s dough: Angelo describes the mixing and kneading only; rising, shaping and baking aren’t described. The quantities are his estimates (“something like”).
- Revised dough: the note says the dough makes “three (3) sheet pizza’s, or four (4) 15” round pizza’s”, and suggests dividing it into “4 or 5 equal parts”; the steps say to divide it into “four (4) equal sections”, one per 12” x 18” cookie sheet.
- Not carried over
- One reader comment (the capture shows the count only).