Hawaiian Pizza

Ontario's ham and tinned pineapple pizza, invented in a Canadian diner and named after the tin

Origin: Chatham, Ontario, Canada

From the journey of Pineapple.

The most argued-about pizza in the world is Canadian, it has nothing to do with Hawaii, and it exists because a Greek immigrant in a small Ontario town was bored. Sam Panopoulos left Greece in 1954 and settled in Chatham, Ontario, where he and his brothers ran the Satellite Restaurant. In 1962 they were serving the standard small-town Canadian diner menu of burgers, chips, and eggs, with pizza just beginning to arrive from the United States as a novelty. Panopoulos had passed through Naples on the voyage over and had eaten the real thing, and he began experimenting. Sweet and sour flavours were fashionable at the time through the Chinese-Canadian restaurants of the province, and one afternoon he opened a tin of pineapple and put it on a pizza to see what would happen. The name came off the tin: the brand was Hawaiian. He never claimed it was authentic anything, and he was unbothered by the argument that followed. It became global. By 2017 the president of Iceland was joking publicly about banning it and then issuing a statement clarifying that he did not in fact wish for presidential powers over pizza toppings; Panopoulos died later that year, having lived to see his experiment become a permanent international quarrel. There is a real argument underneath the noise, and it is about acid and salt. Pineapple brings sweetness and a sharp fruit acidity to a pizza that is already salty from cured pork and cheese, which is the same logic that puts pineapple on gammon, mango in a chutney beside cold ham, or apple sauce with pork. Whether it belongs on a pizza base is a matter of taste; whether the combination itself is sound is not really in doubt. The technical point is that the pineapple must be dry. Tinned rings carry a great deal of syrup, and a wet topping steams the cheese and gives the sodden middle that even people who like this pizza complain about.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 320 g strong white bread flour
  • 5 g fast-action dried yeast
  • 1 tsp fine sea salt
  • 200 ml warm water
  • 1 tbsp olive oil

Sauce

  • 200 g tinned chopped tomatoes, drained of their loose liquid
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed
  • 1 tsp dried oregano
  • 0.5 tsp fine sea salt

Topping

  • 6 rings tinned pineapple rings in juice, drained, patted dry, and cut into 2 cm pieces
  • 150 g cooked ham or Canadian back bacon, torn into rough pieces
  • 250 g low-moisture mozzarella, coarsely grated
  • 1 pinch dried chilli flakes, optional but recommended

Method

  1. Combine the flour, yeast, and salt, add the warm water and olive oil, and bring to a dough. Knead for eight minutes until smooth and springy, then cover and prove for an hour and a half until doubled.
  2. Meanwhile make the sauce. Crush the drained tomatoes with the garlic, oregano, and salt, and leave it raw. Do not cook it.
  3. Drain the pineapple thoroughly, pat it dry on kitchen paper, cut it into pieces, and leave it spread on the paper whilst the oven heats.
  4. Heat the oven as high as it will go, 250°C or more, with a pizza stone or a heavy upturned baking tray inside, for at least thirty minutes.
  5. Divide the dough in two and stretch each piece by hand on a floured peel or board to a 28 cm round, leaving a thicker rim. Do not use a rolling pin.
  6. Spread half the sauce thinly over each base, leaving the rim clear, then scatter the mozzarella, then the ham, and finally the pineapple, spacing the fruit out rather than crowding it.
  7. Slide onto the hot stone and bake for ten to twelve minutes, until the crust is blistered and the cheese is bubbling with brown patches.
  8. Finish with a pinch of chilli flakes and eat at once.

Notes

Canadian back bacon rather than cooked ham is what Panopoulos would have used and is worth seeking out; the leaner cut crisps at the edges where ordinary ham stays soft. Tinned pineapple is correct and not a compromise. Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, an enzyme that digests protein, and on a pizza left to stand it works on both the ham and the milk proteins in the cheese. Canning destroys the enzyme. If using fresh, griddle the pieces hard first. The dough can be made the day before and given a slow cold prove in the refrigerator, which improves it considerably. A jalapeño version is common across Ontario and Michigan and is arguably the better dish. Some pizzerias add red onion, which is also an improvement. What no version should have is a wet base, which is where nearly all the dish's poor reputation actually comes from.

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