Salsiccia e friarielli pizza — the recipe
Naples' other favorite pizza, and the proudest argument against tomato: bitter friarielli — broccoli rabe wilted with garlic and chili — sharing a white base of mozzarella cream with nuggets of sausage. Bitter greens, rich pork, cool cream: a three-way standoff where everybody wins.
Everything below is weighed per ball and scales with your dough. The one non-negotiable is dry greens — friarielli are sautéed first and squeezed firmly, because the cream brings all the moisture this pizza is licensed to carry.
What goes on top
Per pizza, on the default 260 g ball — in layering order:
Stretching bigger or smaller? The model rescales with the dough:
| Topping | 200 g ball | 260 g ball | 320 g ball |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mozzarella cream | 45 g | 60 g | 75 g |
| Broccoli rabe | 45 g | 60 g | 75 g |
| Italian sausage | 45 g | 60 g | 75 g |
The dough
Salsiccia e friarielli is built on Neapolitan dough. Soft, leopard-spotted cornicione. Flour, water, salt, yeast — nothing else. For 4 × 260 g balls:
| Ingredient | Baker's % | For 4 pizzas |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 100% | 630 g |
| Water | 62% | 391 g |
| Salt | 2.8% | 18 g |
| Yeast | 0.23% | 1.4 g |
The yeast is weighed for an example 8 h rise at 21°C — your kitchen disagrees, and that’s the point: set your real schedule in the calculator and it reweighs the pinch.
How it’s done
- Make the dough: 4 × 260 g Neapolitan balls — the calculator weighs the flour, water, salt and yeast for your schedule.
- Stretch each ball on a little flour, pressing the air from the middle out to the rim.
- Top with 60 g mozzarella cream (spread edge to edge, cold — the white base).
- Top with 60 g broccoli rabe (sautéed with garlic and chili, squeezed firmly dry).
- Top with 60 g italian sausage (raw nuggets tucked among the greens).
- Bake at 450 °C / 842 °F — that is pizza-oven territory; at home, run the oven at full blast on a steel or stone and give it an extra minute or two.
Questions from the counter
What are friarielli — and can I find them outside Naples?
Naples' name for broccoli rabe — cime di rapa in the rest of Italy, rapini in North America. Any of those is the real thing: sauté with olive oil, a crushed garlic clove and a pinch of chili until tender, then squeeze. Broccolini works in a pinch but it's the sweeter cousin — you lose the noble bitterness that makes the sausage earn its place.
How is this different from the boscaiola?
Same white-pie family, different forest: the boscaiola pairs the sausage with mushrooms over a garlic-oil base, while this one goes greens-and-cream. Friarielli also bring bitterness the mushrooms never do — this is the sharper, more Neapolitan plate of the two.
Can I put the friarielli on raw?
No — raw rabe scorches at the tips and stays squeaky at the stems, and wet greens flood the cream. The pan does the cooking (garlic, chili, olive oil, a few minutes), your hands do the drying, and the oven just gets everyone acquainted.
Get the dough
The Neapolitan preset weighs the balls and writes the schedule — mix, rise, ball, stretch, bake.
The clock is a suggestion. The dough is the boss. In bocca al lupo!
Impasto is a free pizza dough calculator for Neapolitan, New York, Roman, Sicilian, Detroit, thin crust and focaccia doughs — flour, water, salt and yeast weighed in baker's percentages, with the fermentation schedule written for you.