Pineapple, Pepperoni & Capocollo Pizza
current situation: just made pizza
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Pineapple on pizza is a fight people have because they have only ever had it wet — canned, syrupy, dumped on cold, steaming the cheese into soup. That is not pineapple's fault.
Fresh pineapple, patted dry, sitting next to something cured and salty and a little bit fatty? That is the whole point. The capocollo does the heavy lifting. The pepperoni cups up and holds a small pool of orange fat. The pineapple cuts straight through it.
Everyone invited. Bring nothing.
- Makes
- Two 12-inch pies
- Hands-on
- About 45 minutes
- In the oven
- 8–12 minutes
- Start
- The day before
What you need
The dough — start the day before
- 500 g bread flour
- 325 g cold water (65% — slack and sticky, don't fight it)
- 10 g fine sea salt
- 2 g instant yeast (about ½ tsp — barely any)
- 10 g olive oil
The sauce — makes extra, use it all week
- 1 can (28 oz) whole peeled tomatoes
- 1 clove garlic, grated
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- Salt, and a pinch of dried oregano
On top
- 8 oz low-moisture whole-milk mozzarella, grated off the block — plus a big handful for the end
- 3 oz capocollo, sliced thin
- 2 oz pepperoni — small diameter, natural casing, the kind that curls
- ½ fresh pineapple, ½-inch chunks, patted properly dry
- ¼ red onion, sliced thin
- Olive oil and flaky salt, to finish
- One cold Sapporo (not optional)
How it goes
1 — Dough, the night before
Mix flour and water with your hands until no dry flour is left. Rest 20 minutes. Add salt, yeast and oil and squish until it comes together — sticky, and it will look wrong. Fold it over on itself four or five times, every half hour, for two hours. Cover, fridge, overnight. Three days is better.
pro tip — Barely any yeast plus a long cold night is what gives you that big puffy rim. Fast dough gives you a cracker.
2 — Sauce
Crush the tomatoes in your hands — do not blend them, you will aerate it pink. Garlic, oil, a good pinch of salt, the oregano. No cooking. It cooks on the pizza.
3 — Two hours before
Pull the dough, cut it in two, shape each half into a tight ball, cover, and leave on the counter. It has to come to room temperature or it will not open.
4 — Get the oven stupid hot
Maximum — 550°F if it will go. Rack in the upper third.
pro tip — A pale bottom is the pan. With a steel or a stone, heat it an hour ahead and build on parchment. With a plain metal pan, oil it, stretch straight in, and give it the bottom rack for five minutes before moving it up. Otherwise: beautiful top, soft floor.
5 — Open the dough
Floured hands, press from the centre out, and leave the outer inch alone — that rim is the payoff. Stretch it over your knuckles. No rolling pin; it kills everything you spent a night building.
6 — Build it
Thin layer of sauce to that last inch. Most of the mozzarella. Then capocollo, then pepperoni, then pineapple, then red onion scattered on top so the tips catch and char.
7 — The late handful
Two minutes before it comes out, open the oven and throw on the last handful of grated mozzarella. It will not fully melt. That is deliberate — stretchy pockets sitting on the browned cheese underneath. Two textures. This is the move.
8 — Bake
8–12 minutes depending on how honest your oven is. Rim puffed and blistered, pepperoni cupped and holding fat, onion tips gone dark.
9 — Rest it
Two minutes on a rack, not the pan, or the steam softens the base you just worked for. Olive oil round the rim, a pinch of flaky salt. Cut into six.
Open the Sapporo. Take the picture after, with one slice gone. Nobody believes a whole pizza. LFG.