Valerie Bertinelli’s Focaccia Pizza Is ‘Spectacular’

Food Network star Valerie Bertinelli puts yeasty bread to work in her focaccia pizza. It’s easy, it’s a great recipe to make with the family, and it’s cheesy and delicious. Here’s how to make it.

Bertinelli’s focaccia pizza has a ‘beautiful crusty outside’

The Valerie’s Home Cooking host’s dish calls for bread flour “spooned into measuring cups and then leveled off,” kosher salt, instant yeast, lukewarm water, honey, extra-virgin olive oil, sliced pepperoni, “deli-style slices” of Monterey Jack cheese, dried oregano, red pepper flakes, and grated Parmesan cheese. Bertinelli uses a stand mixer to prepare the dough.

Its sauce includes canned crushed tomatoes, olive oil, kosher salt, granulated sugar, and grated fresh garlic.

Bertinelli says in the Food Network video, below, for the pizza, “I really am so excited about this particular recipe. I love making focaccia. You use a lot of olive oil, so it’s got this beautiful crusty outside and a super tender inside. It is spectacular.”

Get the complete recipe on Food Network’s site.

The culinary star’s pizza takes time but it’s worth it

The making of the dough in Bertinelli’s recipe takes the most time, and it’s simple at that.

Lukewarm water (“So that the yeast has something to bloom in”), honey, and the olive oil are stirred together and set aside.

In a stand mixer bowl, Bertinelli then stirs the dry ingredients: instant yeast, salt, and bread flour (“The bread flour has a higher amount of protein than regular, all-purpose flour and you need a higher amount of protein to produce gluten. The gluten is what gives the bread structure and that’s what you want in this dough”). The olive oil mixture is combined with the dry ingredients. “I’m just mixing this until it gets a little shaggy,” she says.

She then allows the stand mixer to continue combining the dough for a few minutes.

In the meantime, Bertinelli prepares the sheet pan the pizza will bake on, drizzling olive oil on the pan: “In my mind, this is what makes it a focaccia pizza, all that olive oil. It’s going to help the dough not stick, but it’s also going to give the dough a lot of flavor.”

Valerie Bertinelli’s pizza is done once the dough is fully rested

The dough is placed on the oiled sheet pan and Bertinelli says “you don’t need to spread it out to the sides. You need to give it some time now to rest and to rise.” She adds that the dough should rest for two hours; once that time has passed, you put your fingers “into the olive oil and then we stretch and coax the dough to the edges [of the sheet pan].”

She gives the dough a second rest and, in the meantime, the sauce ingredients are combined in a bowl and poured over the completely rested dough. The pepperoni slices are scattered over the sauce, followed by the cheese slices. “It couldn’t be easier,” she says. “This is it, she’s done!”

The pan is placed in a 500-degree F oven for 20 minutes and this pizza is ready to be enjoyed!