Spare pizza dough ball in the freezer? This is the thing to do with it: Sicilian folded pizza-like bread, scaccia (plural: scacce) known also as Italian schiacciata.
What is scaccia?
It looks like a lumpy bread roll, ciabatta-style; it tastes like pizza so no wonder we call it pizza bread. It took me a while to determine the meaning of the word ‘scaccia’, the main difficulty being the fact that it is in Sicilian dialect.
The Italian equivalent is ‘schiacciata’ meaning, unimaginatively, ‘smashed’ or ‘flattened’. Flatbread it is then – or pizza bread if you agree with my slightly less pedestrian label.
Like the best things in the world, and especially the best things that come from southern Italy, this is peasant food. It’s previous night’s dinner leftovers wrapped into thinly rolled out then folded and folded pizza dough – which is always available or on the go in Sicilian households, I imagine.
Clever? But of course, like all the frugal recipes.
Fillings for scaccia
Thus the filling will be whatever is at hand; originally: broccoli, cooked aubergines, sausage or potatoes. But of course posh versions have sprung up too, or perhaps not as much posher as more adjusted to non-Italian palates, featuring – how utterly boring – tomato and cheese.
Granted, the orthodox cheese should be the Sicilian variety called, with flourish, caciocavallo (horse cheese) and the tomato should be thickly cooked down passata – basically, homemade tomato paste.
Folding and folding
It is enormous fun to make – just folding and folding – and even more fun eating. The filling should be sparing, this is not a relative of a deep pan or a stuffed crust. I made my own tomato sauce which as said above is really easy, but at a push use perhaps a sun-dried tomato paste from a jar; it needs to be thick and not too sour.
(On the other hand, if you go to the lengths of making pizza dough, cooking down a tub of passata should be a doddle).
Substitute for cacciocavallo cheese
With regards to cheese, my choice is a mix of provolone and scamorza, smoked mozzarella, as that seemed to me the closest to how cacciocavallo sounds – never tried it. But, again, ordinary mozzarella or a mix with Cheddar (purists – shut up) will do at a push.
I also added some fresh basil, purely for decorative purposes. And from now on that spare pizza dough ball that I always end up with after pizza making sessions will become prized scaccia material on the following day!