Want to spice up your pizza night? This flavorful Diavola Pizza is a fan favorite with Kalamata olives, hot peppers and gooey mozzarella cheese.
Last month Alex and I boarded a plane to Italy, Croatia and Spain in search of culinary inspiration. Armed with a notebook, we started eating everything we could get our hands on. A few pages of notes and a transatlantic flight later, we’re trying to recreate our favorites in our home cooking so you can try them too! And on this trip we found Diavola spicy pizza. We discovered it in Rome, in a brasserie of all places. A brewery in Italy? Yes, as crazy as it sounds. And this flavorful Diavola pizza is ready to spice up your weekly pizza nights. (Because it’s a weekly affair in your house, too, isn’t it?) Read on for our recipe.
Related: Homemade Pizza for Beginners | Which is the best pizza stone?
What is the spicy Diavola pizza?
So what is Spicy Diavola Pizza? In Italian pizza devilish means “bad” pizza. And in this case Deviled means one thing: sharp. We tried our first spicy Diavola pizza at L’Osteria Birra del Borgo, one of our favorite restaurants of this visit to Rome. The man behind this restaurant is known as the king of pizza in Rome, Gabriele Bonci. Everything Bonci does literally turns to gold, which we will talk about in a separate article (!). But on this visit, it was the flavorful Diavola pizza from his new brewery that was remembered by all the guests at our table.
How to make a spicy pizza Diavola
There seem to be some differences in what constitutes a flavorful pizza diavola. Here are some common denominators we’ve found that match our spicy diavola pizza experience in Rome:
- Hot peppers: Of course, the chili peppers on the pizza gave the spicy Diavola pizza its name! A fresh red pepper like a Fresno pepper or a Calabrian pepper is what is traditional. (Calabrian chilies are often used in Italian cooking and are our absolute favorite – we grow them in our garden and you can also find them canned from Dellalo.)
- Spicy Sausage: The spicy diavola pizza we had in Rome had spicy sausage as a topping, and some other online resources use sausage as a typical ingredient in diavola pizza. For this recipe we left it out to make it vegetarian. Of course, if you’re serving meat lovers, you can absolutely add it!
- Black olives: Olives seem optional, but the pizza we had in Rome contained black olives, so we added them here. They add just the right amount of saltiness to the pizza, especially since our version is vegetarian.
- Basic Pizza Margherita: We’ve seen the spicy pizza diavola, described as a margherita pizza with hot peppers and sausage. Here we used our perfect Neapolitan pizza recipe as a base.
Related: Fancy a quick pizza dough without yeast? Rye Pizza Dough Cracker Crust
Do I need a Neapolitan pizza oven?
So do you need a pizza oven to make that flavorful Diavola pizza? No way! However, if you want those nice char marks on the crust like we have in these photos, you need a pizza oven. A pizza oven can get much hotter than a regular oven. While your standard oven tops out at 550 degrees F, a pizza oven can reach nearly 1000 degrees F!
As I mentioned in our last pizza article, we didn’t have a pizza oven until recently. But we have been cooking with a new pizza oven called the for almost a year Ooni pizza door. Powered by wood pellets, the Ooni heats up to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit in just 10 minutes! It takes a bit of practice, but it’s revolutionized our homemade pizza. This is the Ooni pizza oven that we use!
Related: How to Make Artisanal Pizza | Homemade pizza recipes
Looking for homemade pizza recipes?
This Spicy Diavola Pizza is one of our favorite pizzas we’ve ever made at home! Here are some of our other favorite artisan pizza recipes:
This recipe is…
This flavorful Diavola pizza is vegetarian, refined sugar free and naturally sweet.
The description
Want to spice up your pizza night? This flavorful diavola pizza is a fan favorite, featuring Kalamata olives, spicy peppers, and sticky mozzarella cheese.
- Follow the Best Pizza Dough recipe to prepare the dough. (It takes about 15 minutes and 45 minutes to rest.)
- Place a pizza stone in the oven and preheat to 500°F. OR preheat your pizza oven (this is the pizza oven we use).
- Prepare the easy pizza sauce.
- Cut the mozzarella into ¼ inch thick pieces. If it’s incredibly watery fresh mozzarella (all brands vary), you can let it sit on a paper towel for about 15 minutes to remove the moisture, then blot the mozzarella with the paper towel to remove extra moisture.
- Halve the olives. Thinly slice the peppers (reserve the seeds).
- When the oven is done, dust a pizza peel with corn or semolina flour. (If you don’t have a pizza peel, you can use a rimmed baking sheet or the back of a rimmed baking sheet. But a pizza peel is worth the investment!) Roll out the dough in a circle; For instructions, see How to stretch pizza dough. Then carefully place the dough on the pizza peel.
- Spread a thin layer of pizza sauce over the dough with the back of a spoon. Sprinkle with mozzarella, saving a small bite to taste. Try a bite of mozzarella cheese; If it doesn’t taste salty, add a pinch or two of kosher salt to the pizza. (Pizza includes olives which also add salt.) Top cheese with sliced olives and chilies.
- Using the pizza peel, place the pizza on the pizza stone, then bake until the cheese is melted, about 7 minutes in the oven (or 1 minute in the pizza oven).
- Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes, then garnish with torn basil leaves. Cut into pieces and serve immediately.
- Category: main course
- Method: Cooked
- Kitchen: Italian
Keywords: Pizza, Vegetarian Pizza, Neapolitan Pizza, Italian Pizza, Pizza Oven, Vegetarian, Entertaining, Pizza Diavola, Diavola, Kalamata Olives, Peppers, Basil
