Is Champagne the Secret to Nice Pizza Dough?

Champagne famously goes with nearly any dish due to its food-friendly acidity and carbonation. However how does it work as a pizza ingredient? 

Serafina, an Italian restaurant group primarily based in New York Metropolis with a handful of outposts all over the world, is testing out the concept with its new Champagne Pizza. As of Monday, prospects can order the limited-edition menu merchandise, which incorporates Veuve Clicquot within the dough and is topped with mozzarella and cacio e pepe sauce. The Champagne-infused dish sells for $29. 

I used to be intrigued by the idea, not solely due to a primal response to seeing the phrases “Champagne Pizza” in my inbox, but in addition the idea behind the dish. It is sensible that Champagne would work in a pizza dough because it retains pure yeasty qualities from the wine-making course of.

So, at a preview lunch held at Serafina’s new Union Sq. location, I attempted two wood-fired pies made with the Champagne dough: the brand new cacio e pepe taste and the favored tartufo nero (black truffle). Homeowners Vittorio Assaf and Fabio Granato mentioned they merely changed the water within the typical pizza dough recipe with an equal quantity of Veuve Clicquot, which cooks off throughout the baking course of.

How did these pies fold up? (Sorry.) The feel of the thin-style crust was good and crispy. Taste-wise, each have been scrumptious, particularly the cacio e pepe, which mainly tasted like grownup mac and cheese. That mentioned, there wasn’t a perceptible Champagne taste to the crust itself. Any outstanding Champagne notes have been seemingly cooked off throughout the baking course of, and what remained tasted like…nicely, pizza crust, which is to say yeasty and ever so barely candy. That’s arguably a very good factor for pizza purists, but it surely additionally bears questioning: Is that this dough well worth the dough?

If you end up at a Serafina department, the $29 pie is similar to different pizzas on the menu, which vary in value from $23–31. And as Assaf and Granato famous, it’s a pleasant and inclusive thought for graduations or different celebratory events the place not everyone seems to be imbibing. However ought to Champagne be your new secret ingredient for do-it-yourself pies? 

I requested Daniel Gritzer, senior culinary director of our sibling model Critical Eats, in regards to the potential for Champagne in pizza dough. Whereas receptive to the concept, he was skeptical. 

“Including carbonated liquids to batters and doughs is just not unparalleled and may generally be useful. The carbonation creates bubbles, which might result in airier outcomes. And no doubt, any ingredient like Champagne, which has taste all its personal, can cross that taste on to the dough,” says Gritzer.

“However—and it’s an enormous however—pouring expensive Champagne right into a pizza dough sounds much more like a advertising and marketing stunt than a baking finest apply. There are way more economical methods of creating top-notch pizza dough…specifically, working with high-quality primary components and assuredly utilizing yeast, time, and method to make nice dough.” 

“I’d save the bubbly for the wine glass,” he provides.

If you happen to do need to experiment with glowing wine in your cooking at house, it could be price beginning with one thing extra reasonably priced, like prosecco. Nevertheless, with pizza specifically, the mix of flavors will in all probability overpower any of the wine’s remaining profile, particularly if you think about toppings like tomato sauce and cheese, notes Gritzer.

“So many flavors are generated naturally by way of a sluggish dough fermentation, together with a lot of these yeasty qualities that one will get in a wine like Champagne, that I’m actually uncertain the wine goes to do a lot in any respect,” he says. 

Serving Champagne with pizza, although? That’s at all times an incredible thought.