Tuesday, April 3, 2012

BWJ - Pizza Rustica



After another fortnight's hiatus, I bring you this week's Baking with Julia recipe - Pizza Rustica, a recipe by Nick Malgieri. Our host for this week is Emily of Capital Region Dining.  What is pizza rustica?  Pizza rustica is more akin to an egg, cheese and bacon pie than a pizza - kind of a quiche with crust on top as well as below.

The pastry for this pie ended up causing me the most grief, and it wasn't the bottom crust that caused it - in our warm weather, the very soft pastry strips broke when warm or cracked when chilled, so I ended up with a patchwork rather than a lattice of pastry on top of my pie: 


The pie tastes quite good, but is not something I would make regularly - it would be good picnic fare, I think.  One thing I did find rather weird was the sweetness of the crust - it contains sugar, but I think it would have been better without it.

To see what the other BWJ bakers though of this dish, visit the LYL section of the Baking with Julia website whenever it is Tuesday in North America - can't tell if it's East or West Coast time on that site, but my guess is it's East.

19 comments:

Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella said...

I was just thinking that it looked like a delicious slice of quiche! :D

Cher Rockwell said...

The crust was a little too sweet on this, but we did enjoy this.
(The TWD site is on EST, I believe)
Looks good! See you Friday.

Flourchild said...

I cut way back on the sugar! SOrry it was not a favorite of yours..I loved it!!

wendy (pinkstripes) said...

I think your top looks just fine. :)

yummychunklet said...

I like your patchwork look of your dough. Great job!

Johanna GGG said...

not like any pizza I have seen but it sounds interesting. I made pastry last week for a sweet pie and I was surprised at how little sugar it had in it

Blond Duck said...

Looks tasty to me!

Liz That Skinny Chick Can Bake said...

This crust actually worked better than my usual fiascos! I decreased the sugar to 1/4 cup...but 2 T would have sufficed! Looks great despite your hassles~

Unknown said...

The pie looks great, it isn't something I would make regularly either but it's pretty good

Karen @ SoupAddict said...

I also thought it was a bit sweet. Even though it's not really a pizza, I couldn't help but think how tastier it would've been with an actual pizza crust.

Kathy said...

Sorry this was not a hit with you. It looks lovely! I actually enjoyed this…I loved the crust!

Elaine said...

I also had fits with the dough because it was warm in my kitchen. Your pizza looks terrific. I agree that it would make a great picnic dish.

Unknown said...

We loved it! The sweetness of the crust did grow on me and I would make this recipe again;-)

Strychnine said...

I totally agree... while I didn't spit mine out or anything, i wasn't crazy about the combination of the sweet crust and the mild filling. Live and learn, i guess :)

Jill said...

It looks like it turned out well, despite your crust struggles. I really didn't understand the sugar in the crust.

Anonymous said...

you are certainly not alone in the issues with heat and humidity with the pie crust! ... It still looks great though! :) We are going to use different fillings next time and hope that we like it better that way, but I might be using the filling in my next lasagne anyways :)

Alice @ http://acookingmizer.wordpress.com

Betsy said...

I had quite a bit of trouble with this crust myself. I've been thinking about it. I think it was the egg in the pastry. I've never made a rollout crust with egg. I think it makes it very soft. Fortunately, it baked away its ugliness, so I liked its forgiving nature. Your pie looks great, so if you hadn't said, I wouldn't have known you had trouble with the crust.

Kayte said...

I skipped this one as I have made NM's recipe for a dish like this with eggs/cheese/meat in pastry and it lasted forever...we liked it just so so and I didn't have the heart to make another...just a personal thing, nothing against the recipe. I am hoping to make the Lemon Loaf for the next pick. I have decided that I can only make what I think we will really eat around here so with groups, that might not be a good thing. Sigh. You did an excellent job on this one...I would eat one piece of it just exactly as you have it presented on that pretty plate!

Daisy@Nevertoosweet said...

i've never heard of a Pizza Rustica :) very interesting to me! and i agree with Lorraine that it looks just like a quiche but I like how it has a crust on the top ~ Thanks for sharing!