Read on for the recipe

Pizza With Smoked Salmon and Caviar
Chef Wolfgang Puck
Serves 4 (Makes 1 12 inch large pizza)

* 12 ounces Pizza Dough (recipe to follow) Pressed for time? Use frozen premade dough.
* 6 tsp of Chili and Garlic Oil (recipe to follow), or…you may simply use olive oil
* 1/2 cup of thinly sliced red onion
* 4 tablespoons of Dill Cream (recipe to follow)
* 5 ounces sliced smoked salmon
* 2 teaspoons of chopped fresh chives
* 6 teaspoons of Sevruga caviar, optional

1. Place a pizza stone on the middle rack of the oven and preheat the oven to 500°F.
2. On a lightly floured surface, stretch or roll out the dough into an 8- inch circle, with the outer edge a little thicker than the inner circle. Brush the dough with the oil and arrange the onions over the pizza. Slide a pizza paddle or rimless baking sheet under the pizza and then slide the pizza onto the pizza stone. Bake until the crust is golden brown, 6 to 8 minutes.
3. With the pizza paddle or a large spatula, carefully remove the pizza from the oven and set it on a cutting board. Use a knife, an icing spatula, or the back of a spoon to spread the Dill Cream over the inner circle. Arrange the slices of salmon so that they cover the entire pizza, slightly overlapping the raised rim. Sprinkle the chopped chives over the salmon. Using a pizza cutter or a large sharp knife, cut the pizza into 4 or 6 slices. If you like, spoon a little caviar in the center of each slice. Serve immediately.

Dill Cream

* 1 1/2 cups Sour cream
* 3 tablespoons Minced shallots
* 2 tablespoons Fresh dill leaves, chopped
* 1 1/2 tablespoons Fresh lemon juice
* 1/4 teaspoon Freshly ground white pepper

1. In a medium bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix well.
2. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use. Extras will last in the refrigerator for up to one week, and are delicious on potatoes as well.

Note that the pizza dough recipe will make enough dough for 2 12 inch pizzas, so if you are only making one pizza, freeze the remaining dough, it will last for up to 2 months in the freezer. Alternatively you can refrigerate it for up to 2 days.

Pizza Dough:

* 1 packet of active dry or fresh yeast
* 1 teaspoon of honey
* 1 cups of warm water (105º F to 115º F)
* 3 cups of all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon of kosher salt
* 1 tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing

In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast and honey in 1/4 cup of the warm water.

In a mixer fitted with a dough hook, combine the flour and the salt. Add the oil, yeast mixture, and the remaining 3/4 cup of water and mix on low speed until the dough comes cleanly away from the sides of the bowl and clusters around the dough hook, about 5 minutes. (The pizza dough can also be made in a food processor. Dissolve the yeast as above. Combine the flour and salt in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Pulse once or twice, add the remaining ingredients, and process until the dough begins to form a ball.)

Turn the dough out onto a clean work surface and knead by hand 2 or 3 minutes longer. The dough should be smooth and firm. Cover the dough with a clean, damp towel and let it rise in a warm spot for about 30 minutes. (When ready, the dough will stretch as it is lightly pulled.)

Place a pizza stone on the middle rack of the oven and preheat the oven to 500º F.

Divide the dough into 4 balls, about 6 ounces each. Work each ball by pulling down the sides and tucking under the bottom of the ball. Repeat 4 or 5 times. Then on a smooth, unfloured surface, roll the ball under the palm of your hand until the top of the dough is smooth and firm, about 1 minute. Cover the dough with a damp towel and let it rest for 15 to 20 minutes. At this point, the balls can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated for up to 2 days.

To prepare each pizza, dip the ball of dough into flour, shake off the excess flour, place the dough on a clean, lightly floured surface, and start to stretch the dough. Press down on the center, spreading the dough into an 8-inch circle, with outer border a little thicker than the inner circle. If you find this difficult to do, use a small rolling pin to roll out the dough. Lightly brush the inner circle of the dough with oil and arrange the toppings of your choice over the inner circle.

Using a lightly floured baker’s peel or a rimless flat baking tray, slide the pizza onto the baking stone.

Chili and Garlic Oil

* 1 Whole head garlic (about 2 ½ ounces, cloves separated and peeled)
* 2 cups of Extra virgin olive oil
* 1 tablespoon of Red pepper flakes

1. In a small saucepan, combine the garlic cloves and olive oil. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to maintain a bare simmer and cook until the garlic turns golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes. Keep a close watch: If the garlic gets too dark, the oil will have a bitter taste.
2. Let the oil cool, then stir in the red pepper flakes. Leave at room temperature for at least 2 hours to let the flavors blend. Strain the oil into a clean glass container, cover, and refrigerate for up to 3 weeks. You may also use this recipe to saute ingredients for pasta dishes.

Which led us to ponder the never ending NYC thin crust versus Chicago deep dish debate.  Yes, it’s been played out to death, but it’s absolutely a subject many feel passionate about!  I put a quick shout out on Twitter, and here is a taste of the @replies:

Our Colorado friends Abo’s pizza placed a vote for NY.   Delicious food blogger Two Peas and Their Pod voted Chicago, and she gave us her favorite deep dish pizza recipe, thank you!   Gera from Sweets Foods wanted to vote from another area, but we did not hear back!  So we’ll count that one as neutral, Gera let us know in the comments!  Susan from Culture Trek gave us this: “  Aways thin NY, because if I wanted bread, I would eat…. bread (sorry Chicago, I love most everything else about you)”.   Food writer Cate OMalley from the Sweetnicks blog had this to say: “thin crust with bubbles all the way”.    Teacher and writer Carrie Havranek said  “NY Thin!  You need to be able to walk around with the pizza while you are doing five other things.  Can’t do that w/ deep dish!”   Which brings us to an interesting advantage of the big apple:  foldability.  New Yorkers love being able to multitask and eat their slices while driving cabs, and trekking the city, an impossible feat with silverware.   My vote: sorry Chicago, the NY crispy minimalism wins my heart every time.  Final score:  NY 5, Chicago 1.  More responses are need, let us know in the comments what your preference is, we would love to hear it!

In our featured video today, Stephanie visits Spacca Napoli where they show her their secrets for an authentic Neopolitan Italian pizza.  She then goes home with two cute munchkins in tow, and she makes her own version with a white wine and honey crust, and a garlic tomato sauce with apples.  Read about her experience here,  and her written recipe is here.  If you are an ipod user, be sure to subscribe to her podcast “The Tasty Life” so that you can catch every delicious episode.

See you in Aspen Stephanie!  This just in  via The Food & Wine Classic in Aspen on Facebook, “Watch Top Chef Season 4 winner Stephanie Izard challenge Top Chef Season 5 winner Hosea Rosenberg at this year’s Quickfire Classic Cook-Off.” Big cheers again for our friends from Plum Tv for getting us there!

In this video from Food and Wine, Jacques and his daughter Claudine prepare a 10 minute recipe of cured salmon gravlax pizza, a quick and delicious appetizer that would bring holiday cheer to your Christmas party with minimal effort!

What is gravlax you ask? Scandinavian in origin, gravlax literally translates to “salmon dug into the ground”. In the middle ages, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Estonian fisherman had a special technique to cure their freshly caught salmon. They salted it and fermented it (to preserve the fish) by burying it into the sand for several days. Modern preparation of gravlax is much simpler, thinly sliced salmon is simply cured with a dry rub of salt, sugar, and often dill.

Jacques Pépin’s recipe for salmon gravlax pizza calls for the following ingredients: thinly sliced raw salmon, kosher salt, pepper, brown sugar, sour cream, horseradish, a cooked thin pizza crust (you may use a frozen pizza dough to prepare this), thinly sliced red onion, black olives, capers, and basil.

You can read a chef bio about Gino here.

Napoletana Pizza, from Naples, Italy, is traditionally cooked in a wood fired oven with a well cured oak. And the Italians take their pizza seriously! There is actually an Italian association of strict requirements found here, that pizza makers must comply with to label their pizza as “Napoletana”.

Although there is no doubt that the association would disapprove, Italian Chef Gino D’Acampo prepares a simpler oven cooked version of Napoletana pizza in this video. It’s worth watching just to see his hand gestures!

Napoletana Pizza Recipe – Gino D’Acampo On ITV1′s Daily Cooks – The funniest movie is here. Find it