Go to Forno Campo de' Fiori at eleven in the morning and watch what people do with their hands. Someone orders pizza bianca, the baker cuts a long strip off the tray with scissors, weighs it, folds it once in paper, and hands it over still hot. The customer tears it in half on the walk out the door and eats it in the street. No plate, no sitting, no fork. In Rome this is not a snack you're served — it's a snack you catch on the move.
Pizza bianca is the plainest thing a Roman forno makes and the one they'd defend to the death: a long, blistered, olive-oil-slicked flatbread with a dimpled top, coarse salt, a crisp bottom and a chewy, open crumb. No tomato, no cheese — that's the bianca, the white. On its own it's bakery bread. Split and stuffed while it's hot, it becomes the best two-minute meal in the city.
Pizza e mortazza — the true version
Before we get to prosciutto, honesty demands we start with mortadella. The absolute Roman classic — the one children are raised on, the one that sells out first — is pizza e mortazza: warm pizza bianca split and packed with thin slices of mortadella, the big pink Bologna sausage flecked with fat and pistachio. It costs a couple of euros, it's sold at every forno, and it is, for a lot of Romans, the taste of being seven years old and hungry after school.
The prosciutto version is the same idea in a nicer suit. Swap the mortadella for thin slices of prosciutto crudo — Parma or San Daniele — and you've traded the salty, soft, nostalgic filling for something drier, saltier, more elegant. It's the version that shows up on aperitivo counters cut into small squares, where the mortadella one stays a street snack. Neither is better. They're for different moods, and a serious Roman eats both.
The bread is a project (or a shortcut)
Real pizza bianca dough is a high-hydration, long-fermented thing — closer to ciabatta than to pizza — and getting the open, holey crumb at home takes a wet dough and patience. Here's a home version that works. But be honest with yourself: if there's a good bakery near you making proper focaccia or pizza bianca, buying it and focusing on the filling is no shame at all. Half of Rome does exactly that.
The dough (makes one large tray)
- 500g strong white bread flour (or half "00", half bread flour)
- 400ml water (80% hydration — the dough will be wet and sticky, that's correct)
- 10g salt
- 3g dried yeast (or 8g fresh)
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the tray and top
- Coarse sea salt, to finish
Method
1. Mix. Combine flour, water and yeast and stir to a shaggy, wet mass. Rest 20 minutes, then add the salt and olive oil and mix in. It will be too wet to knead by hand in the usual way — instead, over the next hour, do three or four sets of "stretch and folds" in the bowl (wet hand, lift one side of the dough, fold it over, turn the bowl, repeat), 15 minutes apart.
2. Ferment slow. Cover and refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours. The long, cold fermentation is what gives pizza bianca its flavour and its big irregular holes. Don't rush it.
3. Shape. Tip the dough gently onto a well-oiled baking tray, trying not to knock the air out. With oiled fingertips, stretch it toward the corners and dimple the whole surface deeply — those dents hold the oil. Drizzle generously with olive oil and scatter coarse salt. Rest 45 minutes while the oven heats.
4. Bake hot. Bake at your oven's maximum (250°C or higher) for 15–18 minutes until deep gold, blistered and crisp underneath. Pizza bianca wants real heat.
5. Assemble. While still warm, cut a piece and split it horizontally like a book. Lay in the prosciutto generously — let it ruffle and bunch rather than lie flat, so every bite gets folds of meat. Close, press lightly, cut into squares for aperitivo or leave whole for a proper street-food portion.
The in-season upgrade
Two additions turn the prosciutto version from very good into something people remember. In late summer and early autumn, tuck fresh figs, torn open, in with the prosciutto — the sweetness against the salt is a Roman late-summer cliché for good reason. The other move is a smear of stracchino, the soft, tangy cow's-milk cheese, on the bottom half before the meat. Either one, not usually both. Restraint is what keeps it a pizza bianca and not a sandwich.
The one rule
Never refrigerate it after filling. Cold kills pizza bianca — the crumb goes tough, the oil congeals, the prosciutto loses its softness. This is warm-and-soon food, assembled at the last minute and eaten within the hour. If you're serving it at an aperitivo, cut and fill it just before people arrive, not the afternoon before.
What to drink with it
Pizza bianca con prosciutto is salty, fatty, oily and bread-forward, which makes it one of the most drink-friendly things on the whole aperitivo table. It works with almost anything, but a few pairings sing.
- Any Spritz — the neutral richness of the bread and the salt of the prosciutto handle a Spritz's bitterness beautifully. A Garibaldi is especially good, its orange sweetness lifting the salt.
- A cold Frascati — Rome's own crisp white, the default carafe wine at any Roman bar, and a natural partner to anything from a local forno.
- Prosecco — the bubbles cut the oil, the dryness balances the fat. If you're already making a Bellini, you have the bottle open.
- A cold lager — never wrong with salt, fat and bread, and what a lot of Romans actually drink with pizza e mortazza.
Scissors
The tell that you're in a real Roman forno and not a bakery playing dress-up is the scissors. Pizza bianca is never portioned with a knife — it's cut with long shears, in strips, sold by weight, and handed over hot enough to warm your hands through the paper. Everything about it resists being made fancy. That's the whole appeal: the best thing in the case is also the cheapest, and it's been that way for as long as anyone in the neighbourhood can remember.