While we’re definitely fans of the classic Hawaiian pizza here at Ooni — such big fans we created International Hawaiian Pizza Day — Nancy Silverton is a proponent of doing things the more traditional way. With her background in Italian cuisine, and as the owner of celebrated restaurants such as Pizzeria Mozza, and Osteria Mozza (which specialise in more upscale and classic-leaning Italian dishes), it makes sense that she doesn’t dig the Canadian bacon and canned pineapple combination. 

But someone very close to her heart (her son, Ben) loved it. Being the innovative chef that she is, she found a way to fuse the two styles into something simultaneously familiar and refined. In her 2011 book, “The Mozza Cookbook,” Nancy explains, “When I opened up my own pizzeria, I wanted to come up with a pizza using similar ingredients that would please both Ben and me.”

That meant ditching thick-cut Canadian bacon and soggy pineapple. Instead, she uses paper-thin, mandoline-sliced pineapple that caramelises in the oven alongside speck, a strongly-flavoured, cured ham, and jalapeños to offset the sweet fruit with their heat. The result is a complex pizza that’s light, smoky, sweet and spicy, then finished off with a drizzle of olive oil, flakes of sea salt and fresh chives.

Built on a base of Nancy’s pizza dough and her passata di pomodoro sauce, it all adds up to something near impossible to resist. We’re pretty sure you’ll love this pizza as much as Nancy and Ben do, if not more.