Pizza con Salsiccia e Ricotta

Pizza con Salsiccia e Ricotta
Ricotta is a Zeoli favorite soft cheese. It has many uses in Italian kitchens both here and abroad. It is rich and creamy with a natural sweetness of its own. Cottage cheese, pretty decent in its own right, doesn’t match the superb flavor of this cheese. This pizza uses ricotta, Italian sausage, and mozzarella – three little princes of the Italian food kingdom. Chances are you have not had this particular combo, so give it a try. Believe me, your taste buds will yearn for more!
Ingredients for the dough for 4 pizze:
See Pizza di Napoli: La Margherita
Ingredients for the Topping:
4 cups of Ricotta Cheese
8 sweet Italian pork sausage links, filled with parsley and cheese
3 cups of your favorite tomato sauce, heated (Gilda’s gravy would be great here – see Gilda’s Sunday Afternoon Gravy with Meatballs recipe)
1 lb of mozzarella, shredded
2 T of extra-virgin olive oil
Some sea salt (if needed)
Some black pepper (optional)
1 c grated Parmigiano Reggiano
Additional extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling on pizzas
Preparation:
See Pizza di Napoli: La Margherita, for the preparation of pizza dough.
Preheat oven to 425ºF. Take the pizza dough and divide it into four pieces. Knead the dough briefly on a floured surface. Take your pizza peel and flour the surface generously to allow for easy transfer to the oven stone. Place dough on the peel, smacking your hand against it to flatten. Then using a rolling pin, stretch the dough out, creating a round shape – get your dough rolled out thin – no thicker than ¼ - 3/8 of an inch for a pizza con salsiccia e ricotta.
In a large skillet over medium-high flame, brown the sausage links on all sides. Turn off flame when done and transfer them to a plate. Slice in ¼ inch diagonal rounds when cool.
Drizzle a little olive oil on pizza, and then add a ¼ of the tomato sauce on top, spreading evenly throughout. Add salt and [pepper] only if needed (your sauce will probably be well-seasoned already). Place in oven and bake for about 7 minutes or until edges just start to turn golden.
At that point remove pizza from oven, and sprinkle ¼ of the Parmigiano Reggiano on top, then ¼ of the mozzarella, ¼ of the sausage rounds, and ¼ of the ricotta – put little gobs of the ricotta throughout the pizza as seen in image. Return to oven for about 5 minutes or until mozzarella is melted and other ingredients are hot.
Remove from oven, let rest for 5 minutes, then slice and serve!
Buon appetito!