Plenty of Pizza

It’s hard to believe that I haven’t done a pizza post yet. Given that we make pizza maybe once a week in our house, I’ll not even try to count the opportunities I have missed for doing this. The good news is that I cannot think of a better day for a pizza post than January 1. It exactly hits the sweet spot of lingering tiredness and hangovers, but before the guilt sets in and new years resolutions must be taken seriously and salads must be eaten.

There are many reasons why we eat pizza so often. We always have dough in the fridge, for one, and fresh herbs on the balcony. That makes pizza an easy weeknight meal, because all we need to do is roll out the dough and throw some toppings on. In addition, if you get just a little creative, pizza is a great way to use up bits of vegetables, cheese and tomato sauce.

My favorite is a potato pizza with rosemary and parmesan, like this one:

Paulus prefers pizzas with tomato sauce. But we always proceed the same way in making our pizzas: heat up the oven to the maximum temperature (287 degrees celsius in our case), roll out some everyday bread dough to an oval shape (so that it fits on the baking paper).

Then spread the pizza base with tomato sauce or crushed garlic and olive oil.

Next, add your desired toppings, and finish with cheese.

Bake the pizza in the oven (preferably on a pizza or baking stone) for 12-15 minutes.

 

Once you decide to take the leap beyond tomato sauce and pepperoni, there’s really no end to what you can put on pizza. I’ve topped pizzas with kale and gruyere, sweet potato and blue cheese, caramelized onion and thyme or roasted garlic, goat cheese and basil.

Pizza often gets a bad rep for its nutritional value, but when you make it yourself, it’s easy to substitute more wholesome ingredients. We often use whole-wheat flour for the crust, and make the meal filling with more vegetables toppings instead of a thicker crust. And of course, it is entirely possible to serve a salad on the side. Unless your husband is a vegetable-hater.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Fields marked as * are mandatory