I had a lot of fun making cute little personal size pizzas this weekend with friends. Pizza is a great opportunity to be creative and experiment with new combinations of flavors, especially if you decide to make a larger number of smaller pies.
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour and 30 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours
Servings: 7
Gathering the Ingredients:
I find Hyde Park Produce the perfect place to shop for these pizzas because of their wide variety of fresh produce and herbs. Instead of paying for a large bag of herbs that you might not use all of, you can go to HPP and buy small quantities of as many different fresh herbs as you could possibly want. I picked up some parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, chives and basil. The vegetables I picked included potatoes, onions, beets, and some asparagus. When it comes to meats, I don’t think you can ever go wrong with bacon. Often, though, the whole package is rather expensive so I opted for ¼ pound of pancetta from the deli counter instead. For cheeses, I bought ricotta, mozzarella and ground Romano, and for a simple sauce, I chose canned diced tomatoes.
Photo by Liz Tadie
However, you also may find there is not need to stop by the store for ingredients. I already had leftover supplies from making nachos the previous night, so I decided to make use of the extra chorizo, black beans, Mexican cheese and shredded chicken. mozzarella, and ground Romano.
When making these cute little mini-pizzas, please feel free to either follow my recipes word for word, or make changes here or there to suit your taste. I made what looked good to me, but there are literally infinite possibilities in different quantities and combinations of ingredients. The most important things not to skip though are good pizza dough (recipe provided below), a very hot oven and some prep work to get your toppings ready to go.
Prep Work:
1. Prepare the pizza dough (recipe below). The dough will need to rise for an hour or two so plan accordingly.
2. Thinly slice the potato, chives, and beet, toss them in olive oil, sprinkle them with salt/pepper. Roast them at 450° F for about 10 minutes or until the edges start to brown.
Photo by Liz Tadie
3. Dice onions and cook over medium-low heat until the onions are translucent and begin to caramelize.
4. Cook any meat you are using (in my case, chorizo and pancetta).
Photo by Liz Tadie
Dough (makes 7 personal-size pizzas):
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups whole-wheat flour
3 cups all purpose flour
3 teaspoons salt
2 ¼ teaspoons dry active yeast
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 ¾ cups warm water, plus a couple more tablespoons if needed
1 tablespoon vegetable or olive oil
Cornmeal for bottom of pizza
Directions:
1. Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl.
2. Add olive oil and water and mix to combine. Then knead in the bowl for about 3 minutes.
3. Toss in about a tablespoon of the second oil, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and let the dough rise until it has doubled in volume, about 1 to 2 hours.
Photo by Liz Tadie
Photo by Liz Tadie
Photo by Liz Tadie
Assembling the Pizzas:
4. Preheat oven to 500° F. Break dough into separate portions; for the amount of dough prepared earlier, I was able to make seven personal-sized pizzas.
5. Prepare first pizza: roll out dough to about ¼- ½ inch thick, and coat the bottom of the pizza with cornmeal to prevent sticking.
6. Top each pizza with your chosen ingredients. Below are some pizzas with different combinations of ingredients I tried out.
7. Bake each pizza for about ten minutes, or until the dough begins to brown around the edges. While one pizza is in the oven, start to prepare the next one.
Breakfast Pizza:
Grated Romano cheese
Mozzarella cheese
Pancetta
Chives
Roasted potato
Diced tomatoes
Egg
Parsley
Salt/ pepper to taste
Photo by Liz Tadie
Photo by Liz Tadie
Beet Pizza (“Beetza”):
Roasted beets
Ricotta
Sage
Olive oil
Salt
Photo by Liz Tadie
Photo by Liz Tadie
Potato Pizza:
Pancetta
Roasted potatoes
Caramelized onion
Chives
Romano cheese
Photo by Liz Tadie
Photo by Liz Tadie
Margherita Pizza:
Diced tomatoes
Mozzarella cheese
Sliced basil
Romano cheese
Photo by Liz Tadie
Photo by Liz Tadie
Nacho Pizza:
Diced tomatoes
Hot sauce (optional)
Caramelized onion
Chorizo
Shredded chicken
Black beans
Mexican-style cheese
Photo by Liz Tadie
Photo by Liz Tadie
Shaved Asparagus Pizza
Asparagus slices, shaved off using vegetable peeler, and tossed with olive oil
Mozzarella cheese
Romano cheese
Salt and pepper
Photo by Liz Tadie
Photo by Liz Tadie