Ricotta Pizza with Arugula and Hot Honey

This one came from a trip to Bianco in Scottsdale. I sat down, ordered, and the first bite stopped me cold. Simple ingredients, incredible technique, the kind of pizza that makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about what a home oven could do.

I came home and started working on it. This is my version, a white pizza built on a 72-Hour dough, painted ricotta, fresh arugula, Mike's Hot Honey, and a pinch of Jacobsen sea salt. I made it in my class on Wednesday for 226 people on Zoom. Then I made it again on Saturday because I wasn't happy with the first one. The second one was right.

Here's how I do it.

The Technique Is Everything

This pizza lives and dies by the broiler method. Most home cooks never use it. That's a mistake.

Here's what's happening: your Baking Steel preheats at 450°F for a full hour. In that hour, the steel absorbs an enormous amount of thermal energy. Five minutes before you launch, you switch the oven to broil. The broiler coils go red hot. Now you have intense heat coming from below, the steel, and intense heat coming from above, the broiler. That combination is what creates the leopard char on the crust, the explosive puff on the cornicione, and the blistered, airy crumb that makes this pizza what it is.

You launch the pizza, broiler on, for 90 seconds. Then you kill the broiler, crank the oven back to 500°F, and finish the bake for a few more minutes. The result looks like it came out of a 900°F wood-fired oven. It didn't. It came out of your home oven.

That's the Baking Steel doing its job.

Why Painted Ricotta and Not Dollops

I used to do dollops. They look rustic and they taste great, but for this pizza I wanted something cleaner. Painting the ricotta across the center of the dough, leaving the perimeter completely bare, gives you a more even distribution of cheese, a better visual, and it lets the crust be the star. The ricotta melts into the dough during the bake and creates a creamy, rich base that the arugula and honey sit on top of.

Don't overdo it. Two tablespoons is enough. You want to taste the dough.

Ingredients

• 1 x 250g 72-Hour Pizza Dough ball, proofed and ready
• 2 tablespoons whole milk ricotta
• 1 handful fresh arugula
• Mike's Hot Honey, a generous drizzle
• Jacobsen sea salt, a pinch

Equipment

• Baking Steel® Original
• 14" Cherry Wood Pizza Peel

Instructions

1. Preheat. Place your Baking Steel on the top rack of your oven. Preheat at 450°F for one full hour. Don't rush this. The steel needs time to fully saturate with heat.
2. Switch to broil. Five minutes before you're ready to launch, switch your oven to broil. Let the coils go red hot.
3. Stretch the dough. On a lightly floured surface, stretch your 250g dough ball to about 10-12 inches. Keep the perimeter thick, that's where your crust lives.
4. Paint the ricotta. Using a spoon or small offset spatula, paint 2 tablespoons of ricotta across the center of the dough. Leave the outer inch completely bare.
5. Launch. Slide the pizza off the peel and onto the hot Baking Steel. Broiler stays on. Bake for 90 seconds.
6. Finish. Turn the broiler off. Switch the oven back to 500°F. Bake for another 2-3 minutes until the crust is deeply charred and the ricotta is bubbling.
7. Remove and top. Pull the pizza from the oven. Add a generous handful of fresh arugula across the center. Drizzle with Mike's Hot Honey. Finish with a pinch of Jacobsen sea salt.
8. Slice and serve immediately.

The Dough Makes the Difference

This pizza only works if the dough is right. A 72-hour cold ferment builds the flavor, the structure, and the extensibility that lets you stretch it thin without tearing. The long ferment also creates the gas bubbles in the dough that expand in the oven and give you that dramatic puff on the crust.

I created the 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix because I wanted home cooks to be able to make this dough without a culinary degree. Mix it, cold ferment for 72 hours, ball it, and bake. The active time is about 15 minutes. The results are unforgettable.

You can taste the difference. Every time.

Notes

• The arugula goes on after the bake, never before. You want it fresh and slightly wilted from the heat of the pizza, not cooked.
• Don't skip the sea salt. It cuts through the sweetness of the honey and pulls the whole pizza together.
• Mike's Hot Honey is the real deal. The heat builds slowly and it pairs perfectly with the ricotta. Don't substitute regular honey.
• If your oven doesn't have a broiler element on the top, this method won't work the same way. Gas ovens with broilers in a separate drawer below also won't give you the same result. Electric oven with a top broiler is ideal.

The Do-Over Story

I made this pizza in class on Wednesday. It tasted great but I wasn't happy with how it looked. The dough needed more time to rest and the crust color wasn't where I wanted it.

So I made it again on Saturday. Gave the dough another hour. Used the broiler method exactly as described above. Painted the ricotta instead of dolloping it. The second one was the one.

That's how great pizza works. You make it, you learn, you make it again. The Baking Steel® makes it worth doing over and over.