White Pizza

I was warned by many that a really great pizza was hard to be had down here. We have yet to even try any since we have moved since I find them so fun and easy to make them at home. Back in IL, every once in awhile we would order a pizza from one of our favorite places, Taylor Street Pizza. We always got their "white pizza” as they called it. It had sliced tomatoes, garlic, basil and cheese, no other sauce than garlic butter.  D-LISH, it was!!!

When I saw wonderful heirloom tomatoes at Whole Foods this week, it inspired me to make my version of one of my favorite pizzas!

Here’s my recipe for:

White Pizza

Pizza Dough (store bought or homemade)

homemade recipe I mentioned here.

4 Tbsp butter or margarine, softened

1 Tbsp Wildtree Scampi Seasoning or your favorite garlic seasoning

8 slices of favorite tomatoes

2 –3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 cup fresh basil leaves chopped or chiffonaded

(If you are not familiar, chiffonade is a knife cut in which you take a stack of herb leaves and roll them and then just slice away. I’ve learned alot watching my shows on Food Network! :))

8 oz Shredded Cheese (I used Fontina on this instead of Mozzarella just because Fontina is sooooo good)!

I still try to limit my dairy, but when I do eat it, I make it worth my while :)

I roll my pizza out to about 11-12 inches wide by 15-16 long since I have a rectangular pizza stone that isn’t very big.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees with stone in it (and get that exhaust fan on) and then you can get all your ingredients chopped while it heats up.

Mix the garlic seasoning with your softened butter to spread

When the oven is preheated, take HOT stone out of oven and place dough on top and it immediately starts cooking (the secret to using a pizza stone in the first place. If you don’t preheat the stone, the crust actually will be kinda soggy, no good) and you can put on all your ingredients while it starts to cook.

Spread garlic butter, sprinkle garlic evenly, place tomatoes, sprinkle basil, a little salt & pepper and top with all the yummy cheese and bake.

This one only took about 10 minutes to get the crust golden and melt the cheese.

Add a green salad (I just had red romaine lettuce & freshly ripened cherry tomatoes from one of our plants and drizzled with red wine vinegar dressing) and you have a pretty darn yummy dinner with a good amount of veggies!

I realize this is probably not a pizza your kids are going to go crazy for…(but I think you will) so how about a pizza making “party”. Roll out small individual doughs and let the kids create their own from the topping you provide them. Kids usually get excited more about the food they eat when they help make it themselves.

What’s your favorite pizza? Do you make it at home?