Thursday, October 2, 2008

Double Cheese & Mushroom Pizza

Pizza is a 'treat of a meal' served year round in our house, but it's fun to vary the toppings with the seasons. In this pizza, earthy mushrooms pair with nutty gruyere, freshly shredded mozzarella, red wine sauce, and a sprinkle of Italian seasoning, to us it is a perfectly simple fall pizza. This pizza is hearty and filling, packed with flavor, and really easy to make.

First start out with your favorite pizza dough...I frequently use this bread machine recipe that I first saw on allrecipes, it's great, but we're huge pizza fans so we are always trying new crust recipes. This is our 'old standby.'

Bread Machine Pizza Crust

3/4 cup warm water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 1/4 cups bread flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon dry milk powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon bread machine yeast

Put the ingredients in your machine in the order suggested by the manufacturer, in my Oster you put the wet ingredients first, layer the flour on top, and end with the aditional dry ingredients and yeast. Set it on dough cycle and press into your pizza pan, this makes two smaller round pizzas, or one big rectangular pizza, the size of a large cookie sheet.


For the sauce I love to try new recipes as well, but this is a favorite, and you can have it done in about 60 seconds.

Quick and Easy Red Wine Pizza Sauce

6 ounces tomato paste
1 tablespoon sugar (you can decrease or leave out if you do not like a sweeter sauce, or you can sub honey for the sugar)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder or roasted garlic
1/4 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon basil
2 tablespoons red wine
2/3 cup water

Whisk all ingredients together and spoon on your pizza crust, use the back of the spoon to spread the sauce around. You do not need a lot of sauce, but you do want the crust mostly covered in a thin layer. The recipe will give you enough sauce for at least two big cookie sheet pizzas, I usually just store the extra in a little container in the fridge for later uses.



For the toppings I used 2-3 cups thinly sliced mushrooms, 2 cups freshly shredded mozzarella, 1/2-1 cup shredded gruyere, and a sprinkle of pizza seasoning.

Bake at 375 for about 17 minutes, I'd start checking at 15, it may need as long as 20, just kind of watch the pizza. I like to broil the pizza for the last 60ish seconds, just to get the cheese nicely browned. I know not everyone is a mushroom fan, but if you are, this pizza might become a favorite :)

7 comments:

Dewi said...

Andrea,
Mushroom pizza is my husband favorite, I on the other hand not a pizza type person. The only pizza that I wouldn't mind to eat is the "Flamenkuche" specialty to Alsace.
You are so neat, look at that mushrooms, so perfectly lined, like soldiers. Cheers.

Cathy said...

Pizza is one of the few meals that I can get everyone in my house to eat. I love how it can be varied in so many ways, and this recipe looks WONDERFUL, Andrea! I think I am going to ask Santa Claus for a bread machine.

DIY Daily Darling! said...

Andrea I am so glad I found your post. I LOVE it! So I bought a pampered chef pizza cutter a month ago and have been looking for a pizza recipie and yours came in perfect time. I got a thumbs up from everyone except my little girl. It was soooo easy and gave me an excuse to use my bread machine too. I used white cooking wine instead of red (not sure what the difference is). I also only used mozarella and our toppings were olives and pepperoni. It was fabulous! You're amazing!!!

Andrea at Nummy Kitchen said...

Thanks for the sweet comments guys!

Elra, that is sweet your husband's favorite is mushroom pizza, maybe a little bit of the Lithuanian heritage (they love mushrooms) is showing through :) I've never heard of flamenkuche and will have to google it, it sounds interesting!

Cathy, I'm sure you would enjoy a bread machine! They are so much more than dry dense square bread makers, I almost always just use the dough cycle and can adapt just about any dough recipe to the bread machine. It's so nice not to worry about the proper rise temperateure, etc. because it's all controlled in the machine.

Camille, I'm so glad that most of your family liked the pizza! It will probably be even better the second time because now you know how thin to press the dough to your liking. I like a thin crust most of the time :) Not sure if you noticed but I posted the bread machine naan recipe link and blueberry pie link for you back on the Indian dinner post. Take care!

Prudy said...

Oh, I've got to have some pizza before the weekend is through. That looks fantastic. I'm trying that crust since it has milk powder and lemon juice and I'm intrigued.

DIY Daily Darling! said...

Andrea, thanks for the blueberry pie recipie, you remembered. And thanks for remembering it was me who asked I didn't see that you had posted it with the indian dinner I will go and look right now. Now I need to go and get some fresh blueberries, I only have frozen. My little ones like to eat them frozen, which is good for a healthy fun treat. Thanks again. I told a friend at work about your fun blog she loves to cook also.

Di said...

Ooh, that looks fabulous! Plain cheese pizza is my favorite, but mushroom is a close second. The combination of cheeses sounds intriguing, too.

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