In every bakery all over Sicily, there is freshly made pizza, cut into pieces, ready for people to take home. I always buy some, along with the different breads, to have as an antipasto. And if you go into the local bar and have anaperitivo, they will give you a little pizza to eat with it.

The difference between these pizzas and the ones we are more familiar with elsewhere in Italy is that there is not much use of mozzarella. There are no buffalo on the island because they need to wallow in mud and water, so themozzarella di bufala is always brought in from Campania, just outside Naples.

 There are also very few herds of cows, so the production even of cow’s milk mozzarella is fairly small. Instead, the focus is on typical Sicilian ingredients, such as olives, anchovies and tomatoes, scattered with tuma, the local fresh, unsalted sheep’s milk cheese.

You need to choose good-quality black olives, with the stones still in, then pit them yourself—because the intense olive flavor is concentrated around the stone. You must remember that black olives aren’t actually black at all, but a deep purple-brown, depending on the variety. They started out green but have been allowed to mature on the tree. As their color darkens, their flavor becomes more intense and they become softer and more oily. Avoid the shiny jet black ones that you find on many commercial pizzas, or in jars in the supermarket, which are something different completely.

These were green olives that have been put into a water bath with oxygen running through it, to turn them black, so that manufacturers can market them as a black olive that has the firmness of a young green olive. They just taste insipid, and nothing like a real “black” olive.

The Sicilian black olives we use in the kitchen are mature Nocellara and Cerasuola. These are picked green and pressed to make our oil, but sometimes if a tree bears only a little fruit, the olives are left on the branches to ripen until they become “black.”

When you are making pizza dough, the order in which you mix the ingredients makes a difference. It is best to dissolve the yeast in water and mix it into the flour before adding the salt, as the salt burns the yeast and makes it less effective. Once you have added the salt, the small quantity of sugar helps the fermentation. The oil is added last, because if you put it in at the beginning of mixing it acts like a skin, stopping the salt and yeast penetrating properly.

There are three stages that help create a great, crispy base to a pizza. First, rest the dough in the fridge but bring it to room temperature for three hours before shaping it. This is the system we have developed, because we are a restaurant, not a bakery, so we have no proofing room. 

If you can, rest it for twenty-four hours, as the longer it has to relax the more stretchy and pliable it will be, which makes it easier to get a good, thin base. Next, don’t overload the topping, as this will stop the base from crisping quickly; and finally, try to re-create the atmosphere of a dedicated pizza oven, in which the temperature is 260°C/500°F The pizzas go straight onto the hot brick base and hot air cooks the topping at the same time. 

At home, have the oven at its highest temperature, then put as many terra-cotta pizza bases, or upturned baking sheets, as you can fit into the oven so that they get really hot, before carefully sliding a pizza onto each one. If you are making six pizzas, you will surely still have to bake them in batches, but as each one takes only ten minutes, no one will have to wait too long! Remember that opening the door lowers the temperature. In with the pizzas, as fast as you can, then shut the door.

Makes 6 pizzas (10–12 inches)

- 1½ teaspoons fresh yeast or ¾ teaspoons active dry yeast
- 5½ cups 00 flour, plus extra for the bowl and rolling out
- 1 tablespoon sea salt
- 1½ teaspoons sugar
- 2 ounces milk
- 1 ounce olive oil

For the topping:
- 24 good whole purple-black olives in brine
- 18 anchovies, either salted or in oil
- 2 tablespoons tomato sauce
- 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
- 3½ ounces tuma (Sicilian unsalted sheep’s milk cheese) or pecorino (1 cup grated)
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Dissolve the yeast in 1¼ cups plus 2 tablespoons of water in a small bowl.

Put the flour into a large bowl and mix in the yeast mixture. Add the salt and sugar, then the milk, little by little, followed by the oil, until all the ingredients are incorporated in a dough—this will take about 10 minutes. Scrape the dough into a floured bowl and fold it in on itself a few times. Cut it into 6 equal pieces and roll each one into a ball. Put the balls of dough on a tray, cover with plastic wrap and leave to rest in the fridge for 24 hours.

Bring the dough out of the fridge and into room temperature 3 hours before you want to use it.

When ready to make the crusts, preheat the oven to 250°C/475°F/gas 9, or as high as possible, and put in one or two terra-cotta bases or upturned baking sheets (or however many you can fit in your oven).

Lightly flour a work surface, then, using your fingertips, press each ball of dough lightly into a thin round, about 10–12 inches in diameter. You want the base to be about ¹/₈ inch thick, but with a slightly thicker rim. If the dough feels too hard to shape easily, leave it to rest for 5 minutes and then come back to it.

Drain the olives and pat dry.

With a sharp knife, make three or four cuts in each olive from end to end, and then cut each segment away from the stone as carefully as you can and roughly chop.

If using salted anchovies, rinse and dry them. Run your thumb gently along the backbone to release it, then you should be able to pull it out easily. If using anchovies in oil, drain them.

Chop the anchovies roughly and put some of the pieces onto each round of dough, pressing them in so they don’t get burned and bitter by being unprotected on top of the pizza. 

Spread some tomato sauce over each anchovy-studded base, then scatter with onion, cheese, olives and oregano, season with pepper and drizzle with a little extra-virgin olive oil.

Slide the first pizza(s) onto the preheated base(s), and bake for about 10 minutes, or until the dough is golden and crunchy underneath. Repeat until all the pizzas are baked.