Burnt My Fingers

Tomato Pie Taste Test: Utica-style, Utica-style with roasted tomatoes, Sfichione

We have long wanted to do a recipe test for Utica-style tomato pie. With New Years upon us, we realized a suitable competitor to Utica pie would be Sfincione, a Sicilian street food that is especially popular when the calendar turns over. A bit of googling and experimentation produced two recipe candidates, one of which got a sub-test. So let’s look at our tomato pie contenders.

The sauce: for the Utica-style pie, we used a very simple sauce recipe from Sal Detraglia’s lively (though not recently updated) blog about Utica foods and other matters. The key ingredients are a can of crushed tomatoes, a can of tomato paste, and sugar. Precisely because this base is so simple, we balked at Sal’s instructions to roast fresh Roma tomatoes and add them to the sauce. So much trouble! We also did a separate side-test of balsamic vs red wine vinegar add-ins because we wondered if every Italian nonna has balsamic on hand.

For the Sfincione, we began with this recipe from the New York Times but it had a number of flaws, starting with missing a key ingredient, water, duh. A recipe from our mischievous friends at Serious Eats was in general better but we’re glad we began with the NYT because it has a wonderful way of prepping the onions. The result was head-banging levels of umami.

The dough: both the recipes we sourced started with a very wet dough that was lightly kneaded but got most of its tensile strength from a long, cold fermentation. We added some semolina (durum wheat flour) for sturdiness and flavor: the sfichione got just a little; the Utica style pie was almost 50% semolina. The sfich’ also got a boatload of yeast, a full tablespoon for just 300 g flour. The doughs proofed for an hour or so at room temperature, then went into the refrigerator for 24 hours. After that the doughs were punched down, shaped into rectangles, then rolled and stretch with a rolling pin and by hand to fit a half sheet pan. The sfich’ was very elastic; the Detraglia tore when stretched, probably because of the large proportion of hard durum flour. The prepped doughs then proofed 2 hours which brought them up to room temperature and produced a slight secondary rise.

The assembly: there are those who compare the abundance of Upstate New York tomato pie choices and proclaim one better than another because of its crispy crust. The way to achieve this miracle is very easy: lots of olive oil. It goes in the dough, in the bottom of the half sheet pan to bake the dough, and perhaps again on top before the sauce as added. A tomato pie cook can use olive oil in the same way a fine dining chef uses butter and salt: make the food delicious by adding more than you’d ever add at home. We tried to follow a middle road, using oil in abundance but not so much it produced grease pillows. (We put it on the pan, but not on the top of the pies before saucing.)

The cheese: yes, there is cheese in a tomato pie but not necessarily a lot. The Utica style pies got just a sprinkle at the end. The Sicilian got a mixture of ¾ c cheese and ¾ c breadcrumbs, allegedly to “stretch out” the cheese on this peasant street dish. We used Pecorino Romano on both.

The results: the first test, of the vinegars, was conducted in the saucepans used to cook down the sauces. There was no question the balsamic was better. It added a layer of complexity and also sweetness, which is useful if you’re chary of dumping several tablespoons of sugar into your sauce. But the difference was narrow, and red wine vinegar (or cider vinegar) would work fine.

As to the roasted tomatoes, adding them initially threw the flavor profile out of balance. Their acid needs to be tempered with more sugar, so we put in another spoonful for that side of the test pie. After that all three tasters preferred the roasted tomato version in sauce form.

The bake: we preheated a pizza stone in a 450 degree oven and baked the Detraglia pie first. 10 minutes then a 180 degree turn and another 15 minutes or so till the bottom crust was crisp and the top was beginning to brown but not yet too much. Then the heat was lowered to 400 degrees for the sfincione per recipe instructions and it cooked for a little longer at this lower heat. We let them cool to room temperate which is how you’d taste them at local places (I’ve never encountered a “warm” slice nor an offer to heat one up) and again in the morning cold after sitting out on a porch over New Years Eve.

The verdict: the Detraglia pies were very close to what you would think of as a good Utica tomato pie. After baking and cooling, the flavor of the roasted tomatoes didn’t really make a difference but the extra volume they provided was welcome; one taster felt the other side of the pie (without roasted tomatoes) didn’t have enough sauce. We could also have improved the bread/sauce ratio by making less dough; the recipe would easily have filled half a second pan. The pie could also have used more olive oil, on the top of the dough as well as in the pan.

The Sfichione finished out of the running, sadly. The crust was uninteresting and the lower temperature bake made it floppy. The sauce had that funky, skunky flavor you get when there is just too much umami. We won’t make it again, but we’ll definitely fine tune the Detraglia recipe and publish our own version in 2019.