Mix ricotta with objects in your kitchen to create eye-catching pizzas
Ricotta is climbing the ranks of sizzling pizza toppings, in line with Pizza As we speak’s “2026 Pizzeria Trade Traits Report.” Since ricotta isn’t aged, the recent, white cheese is milder than different varieties, making it the right palate to focus on colours, flavors and textures.
In terms of flavored ricotta blends, nobody pushes the envelope like Leah Scurto – the founder, managing companion and pizzaiola at PizzaLeah in Sonoma County, California. Scurto says she began experimenting with infused ricotta round 10 years in the past, initially whipping lemon zest and lemon juice into the cheese historically constructed from buffalo, cow, goat or sheep whey left over from the manufacturing of different cheeses.
As Scurto started competing in opposition to different pizzamakers at occasions such because the Worldwide Pizza Problem at Pizza Expo, she flexed her inventive muscle by including pesto and confit garlic (each pictured on pizza on Web page 36), Calabrian chilis and different peppers to ricotta. “You’ll be able to taste ricotta nearly any means you need,” Scurto tells Pizza As we speak. “Ricotta is a kind of cheeses that’s fairly forgiving. … You’ll be able to pipe it, you possibly can dollop it, you possibly can put it in a squeeze bottle. There’s all types of enjoyable issues you are able to do with ricotta – it’s a extremely versatile cheese.”
Forgiving although it may be, Scurto says ricotta does greatest when sure greatest practices are adhered to regarding serving temperatures, kitchen instruments and consistency of inputs.
Mix With Ricotta
When contemplating what to pair with ricotta, Scurto thinks about taste in addition to shade. Pesto ricotta, for instance, is extra flavorful than ricotta combined with recent basil leaves, since pesto incorporates garlic, olive oil and (in some circumstances) pine nuts. Pink peppers, in the meantime, lend a darkish pink or purple hue to the creamy cheese mix, which may shortly elevate a pizza’s look from meals to edible artwork.
To include the peppers into ricotta, Scurto pulverizes them in a meals processor. Since bell peppers have excessive water content material, she provides heavy cream earlier than combining the combination with recent ricotta. The addition of heavy cream helps to thicken the purple pepper mix, which retains the flavored ricotta from changing into runny.
Kitchen Devices
Relying on what Scurto plans to combine into her ricotta, it may be acceptable to cut, liquefy or purée sure elements. For essentially the most half, she says, any meals processor is as much as the problem. Typically she’ll use a blender or hand mixer to extra intently match the feel of additives to the feel of ricotta, saying this creates higher incorporation.
“You have to liquefy or cream no matter you’re going so as to add into your ricotta to maintain it easy,” Scurto says. “By all means, if you’d like a textured ricotta, go for it! However once I make them, I prefer to easy no matter I’m folding into the ricotta, so the textures incorporate higher.”
How A lot to Use
Scurto goals for teaspoon-size dollops of infused ricotta – in regards to the dimension of 1 / 4. PizzaLeah affords 12- and 16-inch spherical pies in addition to a restricted variety of sq. pies day by day. One sq. pizza on the menu, the FG Particular (named after pizza maker Frank Giovanni), options pepperoni, sizzling honey and ricotta utilized with a piping tip so as to add texture and dimension.
Except for the occasional menu mainstay, such because the FG Particular, Scurto usually saves ricotta for limited-time-only objects, saying “It’s a whole lot of prep. I am going by means of a ton of ricotta. Most typical is a lemon zest or a lemon ricotta,” she says. “However for specials, something goes, all the time.”
Whereas some pizzas are topped with ricotta pre-bake utilizing a squeeze bottle, others get the ricotta therapy post-bake – particularly if the combination is prone to soften and pool within the oven.
Make and Serve Confit Garlic Ricotta
To create her well-known Confit Garlic Ricotta (see recipe), Scurto selects an olive oil with a excessive smoke level. “Confit is historically cooked in its personal fats, however garlic doesn’t have its personal fats,” she explains. As a substitute, she submerges garlic cloves within the olive oil, bakes them and lets them cool submerged within the oil for one hour.
Picture by Leah Scurto
Confit Garlic Ricotta
by Leah Scurto, PizzaLeah in Windsor, California.
“Should you pressure the oil and smash these garlic cloves down, they flip into a really easy paste. If you want to skinny it out, you possibly can add a little bit little bit of that garlic oil again in,” Scurto says. “Upon getting that tremendous skinny paste, you possibly can fold it straight into your ricotta with a spatula and blend it collectively.”
In contrast to uncooked garlic, which will be sharp and bitter, roasted garlic provides a candy taste to ricotta’s comparatively clean canvas, the pizzaiola says. The cloves aren’t cooked to the purpose of caramelization, so the mix is a uniform tan shade with out burnt flecks combined in.
If the confit garlic is heat when added to ricotta, it might want to arrange within the fridge for “no less than a few hours,” Scurto says. However even room-temperature garlic confit must be refrigerated as soon as combined with ricotta. “I all the time preserve the ricotta chilly, and what I do is pipe it on – that’s my transfer. That’s the way in which I like to make use of it greatest.”
KATE LAVIN is Senior Editor at Pizza As we speak.
