[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]
Continuing our exploration of PLO's,* this week we're looking at matzo pizza. It's one of those ideas that seems great on paper, but doesn't quite pan out in reality. What you're hoping will happen is that your pizza will come out tasting something like a fresh, homemade version of a Domino's Thin Crust pizza. What really happens is that by the time your cheese is done melting, the sauce has soaked into your thin matzo base, and you end up folding the flaccid objects in half, hovering over the garbage can as you shamefully shovel them into your mouth, all the while hoping that your spouse or officemate don't walk in at the precise moment that the matzo loses all pretense of structural integrity and sheds its fillings over your shirt.**
*That'd be Pizza-Like Objects.
**That's ok, it hadn't been washed recently anyway.
So how do you prevent this sort of blowout? Simple really. There are only two rules.
First: do not oversauce your matzo. Matzo and cats have one thing in common: they fear liquid. Use only a sparing amount of sauce. Better yet, just use rough chunks of drained canned tomatoes and apply in spots like you would for a grilled pizza.
Second: melt a thin layer of structural cheese onto your matzo before applying your sauce. Just like with French Bread Pizza, this cheese will form a moisture barrier, helping to keep your matzo firm and crisp under even the fiercest of topping onslaughts.
For an extra-crisp, greasy-on-the-bottom Domino's appeal, finish off the pizzas stovetop in a bit of olive oil.
The pizzas are thin and have a tendency to cool down far faster than you'd like them to, so make sure to eat up fast. I have a feeling this won't be a problem.
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About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.
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