Miriam Szokovski | Chabad.org
Pizza Ebraica (“Jewish pizza”) is an Italian Jewish pastry filled with nuts, raisins and other candied fruit.
It might look like I left it in the oven too long, but that’s actually one of its distinctive features — it’s dark, almost charred, outside. The inside is soft, and the contrast — as well as the slightly burned fruit on the outside — gives it its unique flavor.
I have not had the original Pizza Ebraica, sold in only one store in the Jewish Ghetto in Rome. But I was sent this recipe (attributed to Rina Piazza and Hamos Guetta) by an Italian friend. I then read and watched every recipe I could find, and I hope it is as close to the original as possible.
One difficulty I ran into was finding the candied fruit. Candied fruit is not dried fruit. It’s a big part of Italian cuisine but not as common in the U.S.
I’m sure it is available in specialty and international food stores or online, but at my local supermarket, the closest I found was a “holiday mix” for use in fruit cakes. It was already diced quite finely and included some fruits that are not typical for pizza ebraica. Ideally, they would be in bigger chunks.
So, if you want to go authentic, and you have easy access to candied fruit (or the determination to hunt some down) — you want to look for citron and melon, in particular.
Pizza Ebraica | Pareve
Yield: 8 pieces
1 cup white wine
⅔ cup raisins
9 tablespoons sugar
⅓ cup oil
1½ cups flour
½ cup pine nuts
¼ cup whole almonds
¾ cup mixed candied fruit, typically melon, citron and cherries
Soak the raisins in the white wine for at least 30 minutes. Do not discard the wine; you will need it later.
Preheat your oven to 475 degrees F.
In a medium-sized bowl, mix the sugar, oil and salt. Slowly add in the flour and wine, alternatingly. When the dough starts to feel dry, slowly add some wine to loosen it. Then add more flour until all of it is incorporated. The dough should be soft and wettish but not sticky.
Mix in the nuts, raisins and candied fruit.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Shape the dough into a log, approximately 4 inches wide. Use a knife to make indents in the dough, approximately 1.5 inches apart.
This is where you will cut it into individual bars once it is baked.
Bake for 20 minutes. It should be quite dark on the outside (the inside will be soft) and borderline charred. The raisins on the outside will be burned — that’s how it should be.
Remove it from the oven and let it cool. Cut along the indents you made earlier into individual rectangles. Store it in an airtight container (or freeze).
Miriam Szokovski is a writer, editor and member of the Chabad.org editorial team.