Saturday discussion post: pizza (37/365)

[white_hart]

I am making pizza tonight. I've made quite a lot of pizza since cultivating a sourdough starter last spring, and always use the same toppings: tomato sauce, mushrooms, prosciutto, artichoke hearts, anchovies for T, black olives for me and mozzarella. It is a very good pizza (and pretty much what I'd order in a pizza restaurant,though I might skip the ham if it was just for me).

What would you have on your pizza? Would you make something different at home to what you'd have in a restaurant?

Comments

[hilarita]

I'd usually go for passata, mushrooms, more mushrooms, bacon, pineapple, mozzarella and maybe some cheddar for extras. Back when I could eat most of those foods, that is.

This isn't usually available in a restaurant.

[white_hart]

That sounds nice!

[angelofthenorth]

Pineapple and cheese for me

[white_hart]

Pineapple on pizza reminds me of being a teenager. The last day of secondary school before GCSEs we finished at lunchtime and my friends and I sat in the park and ate pizza with mushrooms, green peppers and pineapple (I think we'd only had a takeaway pizza place for about a year by then).

[cosmolinguist]

I really love fancy pizzas with what seem like strange combinations of toppings, like blue cheese and pear.

Blue cheese is just amazing on pizza.

I also like mushrooms, and fresh basil. Garlic, lots of garlic. Spinach is good too.

[white_hart]

I love blue cheese and pear together. How do they work on a pizza? Do you have tomato, or no tomato?

[lilysea]

English spinach
haloumi
garlic
olives
sweet potato
pineapple...

[white_hart]

That sounds nice! Do you roast the sweet potato first?

[used_songs]

We put vodka sauce, jalapenos, red onion, mozzarella, tomato and thinly sliced brussel sprouts on ours and it's pretty darn delicious.

[white_hart]

I should really think about using a wider range of vegetables on pizza - the one I normally make doesn't make much inroad into the veg box but I'm sure there would be other things I could use.

[used_songs]

If we have a pot of frijoles a la charra we will sometimes also put those on top or just eat them with the pizza.

[cmcmck]

I love the quattro stagione- the veggie version, artichokes, basil, mushrooms, black olives- a quarter each

[white_hart]

That's basically my ideal pizza except I like the toppings mixed together!

[sfred]

Mushrooms, olives, capers and aubergine (and mozzarella, and tomato sauce).
I think this would be my preference at home and in restaurants.

[white_hart]

That sounds nice! I love aubergine.

[used_songs]

Me too! I'm going to have to try adding it to ours.

[shewhostaples]

Anchovies, black olives, garlic, capers, no cheese.

[white_hart]

I don't think I've ever had a cheese-free pizza. If you don't mind saying, is that just preference or do you have a dairy intolerance?

[shewhostaples]

Preference - and just for this specific pizza. It wouldn't have occurred to me, but it's an option on the menu at what used to be our local, and when I tried it I loved it. The salty/tangy/sour combination really shines through without the cheese masking it.

[white_hart]

It sounds good - kind of like pasta puttanesca but on a pizza.

[girlyswot]

I really like the Pizza Express one with an egg on it, but I would never make that at home.

[white_hart]

I've never tried that one - my standard Pizza Express pizza is La Reine or Giardinera, or sometimes the one with goats' cheese. (Now trying to remember when I last went to Pizza Express. It may have been the one opposite Baker Street underground the day we came home after our last trip to Scotland, in September 2019. Though we used to get the supermarket Pizza Express pizzas before I started making pizza, but our Tesco only had the pepperoni ones or ones neither of us really likes at all like Polla Ad Astra and Sloppy Giuseppe.)

[girlyswot]

I am always disappointed by the supermarket range, too.

[tree_and_leaf]

I sometimes crack an egg onto a pizza. It works fine in a domestic oven and it's an easy (and to my mind v tasty) way to ad protein to what is a delicious but stodgy meal.

[mountainkiss]

I love the one with mushrooms and truffle oil. Otherwise, quattro formaggi.

(I was diagnosed as gluten intolerant about nine months ago, so I can only have sourdough pizza.)

[white_hart]

Is sourdough lower in gluten? Or do you have a gluten-free sourdough?

[mountainkiss]

I do not fully understand this but I think it’s a different kind of gluten.

[callmemadam]

It would definitely include anchovies and black olives.

[white_hart]

I used to love anchovies but then I ate something that had too much anchovy in and I can't eat them any more :-(

[danieldwilliam]

When I make pizza at home I usually have
Black olives
Anchovies
Halouimi
Capers

I used to try to put an egg on top of this to cook but it very rarely worked.

In a pizzeria or getting take away I usually have some combination of interesting meat or, if its a posh pizzeria, the most unusual pizza they have.

[white_hart]

I suspect that you need a much hotter oven than a domestic oven to get the egg to cook properly.

[danieldwilliam]

That's undoubtedly a large part of the problem and I'm not sure it's soluable at home because of the way the other parts of the pizza cook.

[antisoppist]

At home I make bases and a tomato sauce that is tinned tomatoes, chopped onion, garlic, tomato puree, oregano and a bay leaf. Then there is sliced mozzarella and grated cheddar and everyone adds their own things to that. I add anchovies and capers.

[white_hart]

That's pretty similar to the tomato sauce I make, except that I use passata instead of chopped tomatoes for a smoother sauce. It makes a pretty good base to add other things to.

[qatsi]

Both your options sound great. I had some success with a Lakeland recipe for rocket, pear and stilton as a topping; less success in trying to imitate the mozzarella, lemon and basil topping I've had a few times at O'Ver in Southwark. (Probably should have only added the basil at the last minute).

Otherwise, I usually just take a shop-bought mozzarella and tomato pizza and add olives (any sort) and home-grown basil.

[white_hart]

The mozzarella, lemon and basil sounds interesting, but I can see it would be hard to replicate at home.

[serriadh]

I don’t make my own, but our local restaurant does great takeaway and I rotate between pepperoni, fig/goats cheese, gorgonzola/walnut/mushroom, or fiorentina depending on my mood.

[white_hart]

That sounds good. Sadly the only takeaway pizza we can get here is Domino's :-(

[mrs_redboots]

I'm not desperately fond of pizza, if the truth be known. If we order it in this country - which is rare - I like vegetarian with extra pepperoni (don't knock it - it works!). If I buy it from the supermarket, I quite often buy a very plain one - just tomato and mozzarella - and then add extra tomatoes, mushrooms and sweetcorn, also peppers if I have any. In restaurants, I like the thin-crust Continental style with a single topping - onion or mushroom, for preference. But really, it's only a glorified cheese and tomato sandwich....

[white_hart]

Well, it's not a cheese and tomato sandwich can't be a glorious thing with the right ingredients. (Though I think the fact that pizza has tomato sauce and not sliced fresh tomatoes is a big difference.)