this baking challenge is certainly going to get me to make recipes i never would have otherwise.

take this "pizza" rustica.

i approached the recipe with extreme caution. i knew i could get behind the ingredients in the filling: prosciutto, ricotta, cheese, more cheese.

but baked in a sweet pie crust?

with a fancy-pants lattice top?

i mean, julia and dorie, are you for real?

i cut the recipe in half and baked the pie on a sunday and waited (waited! me!) until tuesday when i would have friends over to help me judge and consume what i feared would be calorie-bomb without much of a payoff.

well, i take it all back.

this was a delicious recipe. i mean. ricotta. mozz. parm. prosciutto. done. and the salty filling contrasted really nicely with the sweet crust. which – and we all know my fear of rolling pins – was easy to put together in the food processor, did not require time to chill, and was reasonably forgiving when it came to assembly.

the recipe omits an egg wash for the crust, which i added when i reheated because who wants a pale pie? it ended up a little toasty around the edges and a little pale in the middle where the filling sunk during the first and second trip to the oven.