Hi, foodies in the Hive!
How did you like the last pizza you had recently? Was it any good? Was it homemade?
Ours at home was homemade, and it was pretty good 😃 And I want to share it with you on the occasion of the Foodie Contest brought to us by Foodies Bee Hive. This time, the theme, as you may guess, is #pizza!
For some time now I've been curious to try more fruits in savory dishes. Pears are always good with cheese, so they seemed like a great choice for a pizza. And I was right. I also discovered that pears are also very good with olives. Super tasty combination.
Pizza Sauce
Ingredients:
- 2 cups fresh tomato
- 1 tablespoon cane sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teapoon rosemary
- 1 tablespoon oregano
- 2 tablespoons freshly crushed garlic
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 tablespoon white vinegar
Lets prepare the sauce!
I like to use fresh tomatoes to prepare the pizza sauce.
I prepare it as I was taught by a friend who has passed away. In turn, he was taught by an Italian friend who had a very popular pizza in my city, with the difference that I use fresh garlic instead of garlic powder.
I put everything in the blender, except the spices.
I only give the spices a couple of strokes.
This tomato sauce may wait for months in the freezer before I use it again. But this one has been frozen only for a week.
I took it out of the freezer this morning, along with 400 gr of mozzarella cheese, and I left them in the sink to thaw.
Ingredients:
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups warm water
- 1 ablespoon cane sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon granulated yeast
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
Preparing the dough:
This time, I put everything in a bowl, mixed, and let it settle for 10 minutes. Then I kneaded it for a couple of minutes until the dough didn't stick to my fingers. Then it was time to let it raise. An hour later
An hour later, the dough had quadrupled in size and was very soft and elastic. This is very important if I am going to use the square baking tray.
As this pizza was to share it with some friends, I chose one of my biggest trays: 35 cm x 45 cm. I greased it well only with olive oil.
Toppings
This time we needed to add at least eight toppings. At first, I thought it was going to be a problem, as I don't ever use more than four of five toppings on a pizza, but I had some interesting choices in the fridge which made my job easier than expected.
Ingredients:
- 100 gr Pepperoni
- 2 cups sliced pear
- 1 cup blue cheese stuffed olives
- 1/2 cup red bell pepper
- 1/2 cup green bell pepper
- 400 gr mozzarella cheese
- a little Gouda cheese
- 1 cup chopped bacon
- 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh garlic
The most interesting part of this pizza was my adding a sliced pear. Usually I wouldn't do it along with so many toppings and without arugula, but this time I made an exception, and it worked out pretty well.
I peeled it and sliced it so I could have enough pieces to place on this big pizza, so each slice was less than one centimeter thick.
But the rest of the ingredients were finely chopped, except for the pepperoni, which was sliced already when I bought it.
Time to assemble this pizza!
Once I had all the toppings, it was time to assemble the pizza.
I covered the dough with pizza sauce.
...And made sure I covered it well with enough mozzarella cheese.
Then I added the Gouda cheese.
Red and green bell pepper.
Pears... Bacon and garlic.
Enough pepperoni.
...and olives!
I added some olive oil to the frozen basil pesto I had in the freezer...
And added some, along with a little salt and freshly cracked black pepper.
This pizza was baked in a preheated oven at 280 degrees C x 30 minutes.