17/05/2025: Pizza is a food that I eat only once a week, but since I came to Italy, I ate countless pizzas for two weeks until I got sick of them. I started with the somewhat unfamiliar name of spicione.
Spicione refers to sponge pizza, and it is an Italian name for the dough that is fluffy and thick like a sponge. It is not round but square-shaped, and it is characterized by its appearance similar to pizza bread.
I arrived at a bakery slightly outside of downtown Palermo to eat spicione. I originally thought it was a pizza place, but it was a bakery that sold pizza, and it was busy with locals buying bread until late at night.
You can choose other breads from the display case, and for pizza, there is a menu attached, so you can refer to it and order. When you order, they cut the pizza baked in a huge mold and heat it up once.
The price for the two signature pizzas, spicione and Siciliana, and two bottles of beer was less than 10 euros. I was surprised at the cost-effectiveness and was impressed by the friendly staff.
As I mentioned earlier, the pizza is square and cut into 8 pieces so that you can eat it one by one. The edges are baked crispy, similar to Detroit pizza, and the dough is focaccia, which is probably not Italian.
As the name suggests, Siciliana contains ingredients from Sicily. Instead of tomato paste, it is topped with a lot of herbs, finely chopped cherry tomatoes, caccicavallo cheese, anchovies, and onions.
Since the dough is thick, the taste of the ingredients should be absorbed into the dough, but the texture of the dough was moist as if it was soaked in water, so it wasn't like that at all. The savory taste of the cheese, anchovies, and onions were also well-infused into the dough.
The spiciness of the spiciness was much heavier than that of the Siciliana because it was based on tomato paste. The ingredients felt like they had completely soaked into the dough, and the saltier taste went well with beer.
Personally, I don't think that Spinchione surpasses Neapolitan pizza because my taste for pizza is so strong. However, it was definitely delicious, and considering the price, I want to eat it more often than Neapolitan pizza.
17/05/2025: While waiting for the afternoon opening of my travel and life companion's art group show, we stopped at this place near the Statue of Liberty, which is much more than just a bakery: it also includes a bar and a restaurant. We were in a hurry, but we couldn't resist tasting some excellent anelletti al forno and an irresistible sfincione palermitano. We finished with an excellent coffee, in a pleasant and original location. If you have more time, it's really worth stopping calmly and enjoying everything.
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