Category: Pizza

Looking for unique pizza ideas? The beauty of making them at home is that you can create something delicious based on ingredients you have available. Start with a good, store bought pizza dough. Roll it out as thin as you like while preheating your pizza stones in a 500 degree oven. We routinely make two pizzas from one pound of dough. I keep a couple balls of dough in the freezer so we can make them whenever the mood strikes. If you would like to make your own dough from scratch, here’s a recipe from dishcrawl.com.

One of my favorites that can be made with basics I usually have on hand is Quattro Stagioni, meaning the 4 seasons represented by each of the ingredients. We first had it in Venice at one of the few places that was open while everyone else was enjoying siesta. We hadn’t adapted to local time/customs yet that early in the trip.

You can decide if you want to arrange the ingredients separately on each quadrant of the pizza or distribute them evenly, which is the way we often do it.

Once you have rolled out the dough and placed on a preheated pizza stone, top with red sauce. Sometimes we use store bought sauce and sometimes I make it myself. Top with mozzarella and follow with the ingredients listed below.

Toppings For Quattro Stagioni Pizza

• sliced capicola ham or prosciutto
• chopped black olives such as Kalamata
• sliced mushrooms
• artichoke hearts

Why do I say this is one of those unique pizza ideas that you can make from ingredients on hand? Because even if you don’t have fresh mushrooms or artichokes, you can always keep some in the freezer and canned in the pantry. That’s one of my strategies for being prepared and shopping less often while always having the makings of a great meal.

We don’t buy capicola often, but prosciutto makes a regular appearance at our place, so even if I didn’t buy it for this pizza in particular, it’s likely that I have a few slices sitting in the refrigerator. And guess what? Using even 3 out of 4 of these items still makes a great pizza.

Bake for 10 minutes or until crust is golden.

Ingredients for Basic Red Pizza Sauce:

• a few cloves of garlic
• canned tomatoes
• basil (dried or fresh)
• oregano (dried or fresh)
• French thyme (dried or fresh)
• olive oil

Chop the garlic first and then add the other ingredients to taste and puree. Buon appetito!

By the way, fantastic pizza doesn’t always require red sauce. Learn step by step how to make our favorite pizza without it.

When I first met Michael, the only pizzas he wanted to eat were plain cheese or pepperoni. I can appreciate keeping it simple if you want to evaluate a real New York pizza…but I like variety. We have come a long way since those days.

Years ago on a trip to Carmel, California, we ordered a pizza without tomato sauce called “Cristina” from Il Fornaio. Michael suggested it because he knows how I love mushrooms and truffle oil. Guess what! It became one of his favorite pizzas and we make it frequently with a few minor modifications.

Ingredients:

• pizza dough (store bought works for us)
• grapeseed oil (it won’t smoke at high temperatures like olive oil)
• minced garlic
• mozzarella
• sliced sautéed mushrooms
• prosciutto
• arugula
• shaved parmesan
• truffle oil

Yes, our favorite pizzas begin with garlic minced in the food processor with grapeseed oil. No red sauce. The rest of the ingredients go on in stages.

It’s worth the wait! Please read Pizza for another of our favorites and ideas on what to do if you don’t have a pizza stone or rolling pin.

We make pizzas with store bought dough regularly, but I didn’t think Michael would be very keen on a pizza without mozzarella, which we happened to be out of. So I decided to make a homemade calzone instead. Folded over and sealed up, I was sure he wouldn’t miss it. You can make all kinds of simple meals by using ingredients you have on hand.

First off, I let a pound of store bought pizza dough rest at room temperature while I heated the oven and my pizza stone to 500. You can use a cookie sheet if you don’t have a pizza stone.

Zero waste cooking led me to some ricotta and roasted cauliflower I wanted to finish. So, after letting the food processor chop up the cauliflower, I mixed it with an equal amount of ricotta and a couple of cloves of minced garlic. Hooray for sneaking in more veggies! Spread that combination onto one half of the rolled out crust. What else could I fill this calzone with? I had some bell peppers and mushrooms in the freezer. So after sautéing some sliced onions in olive oil, I added the peppers and mushrooms to the skillet and cooked until tender. Seasoned with salt. Cooking without a recipe allows you to create an endless variety of simple meals everyone will love.

Homemade Sauce For the Calzone

Next I decided to make a quick and simple sauce to top the calzone. Sautéed some chopped onions and a couple of cloves of minced garlic in olive oil before adding some tomatoes from a can. Broke up some of the tomato chunks a little with a potato masher and simmered briefly until I liked the texture.

A quick note on canned tomatoes here: quality is very important. I use a lot of canned tomatoes and I have learned that they are not all created equal. I would rather pay a little more for organic, ripe canned tomatoes without any extra stuff added. As far as the style is concerned, whole peeled are very versatile. Chopped ones are great when you want them to hold their shape a bit.

Rolling Out Dough and Baking

Michael is the master of rolling out the dough, but I got a head start on it for him because I didn’t think it needed to be perfectly round or very thin for this meal. Once he saw what I was doing, though, he took over and tried to correct my work…with limited success. Hey, I was going to top this with sauce, so it didn’t have to look perfect. He also remembered to prick it with a fork to let the steam escape while cooking.

After folding over and sealing up the edges, bake the calzone for 13-15 minutes or until crust is golden. Top with sauce and fresh basil to serve.

Again, cooking without a recipe is the goal for these simple meals. As with pizza, the sky’s the limit on what you can create. Develop your own intuition in the kitchen, using ingredients you have available. Below is what I had on hand and used for this Veggie Calzone. Have fun!

Ingredients:

• pizza dough
• ricotta cheese
• roasted cauliflower
• garlic
• bell peppers
• onions
• mushrooms
• canned tomatoes
• olive oil
• basil

Learn how to make our favorite pizza without red sauce next.