Inspired by a pair of new friends that made and served us delicious vegan pizza for dinner when we went to visit them a couple of weeks ago. They made a mushroom and caramelized onion pizza and I kept thinking about it. I also had a big tub of spinach in my fridge that needed consuming, and some blue cheese crumbles I also needed to use up, and all of these things sounded good together so I got to work.
I tried a new from-scratch pizza dough recipe for this that was both quicker than my bread machine can make and tasted a lot better too, so I am likely to use it from now on when I make pizza.
Notes:
Dough- I used all purpose flour.
- I only had active dry yeast so I did let it proof for 10 minutes in warm water mixed with the sugar before adding it to the rest of the dough ingredients and it worked great.
- I added dashes of garlic powder and thyme with the dry ingredients.
- Since it's winter and it's cold where I live, I proofed the dough in a very slightly warmed oven. I let my oven preheat to its lowest temperature (170 F), then turned it off as soon as it reached temperature, and let the dough proof in there.
Toppings
- For sauce I used about 1/2 cup jarred alfredo sauce because I had it and it sounded good, but you could also just drizzle/spread the top of the rolled out crust with some olive oil.
- I chopped 8 oz crimini/baby portabella mushrooms into bite sized pieces and sauteed them in olive oil with some salt, pepper, and garlic powder until soft but not until all their liquid had been released.
- I caramelized 2 small-medium sweet onions in a couple tablespoons of butter with a pinch of salt for ~20 minutes.
- I wilted about 6 oz spinach in a saucepan with a tiny bit of water, sprinkled some garlic powder and salt on after cooking, waited until it was cool, then squeezed out most of the water. I then chopped it roughly.
- I used about 3-4 oz blue cheese crumbles. These went on last.
Verdict: I was really impressed with the pizza dough! It was pretty straightforward to make, easy to work with and shape, and tasted great (significantly better than my previous go-to recipe). I was especially happy with the texture. The combination of toppings was also better than expected, really wonderful for a clean-out-the-fridge creation. I would gladly make this dough again and even this exact pizza.
-----------------------
RECIPE: Pizza Dough (Sugar Spun Run)
