Monday, January 07, 2008

From salad to pizza... just hold the lettuce!

I can't remember the last time we actually bought prepared pizza dough since we began making our favorite Whole Wheat Pizza Dough recipe. While you can make it by hand, and I sometimes do, I love how quick it comes together using a food processor! It makes just about a pound of dough, creates little mess and it literally comes together in a couple minutes.

I prepared that effortless dough again tonight so we could turn this classic combination of ingredients for a salad into a Pear and Blue Cheese Flatbread for dinner. If you have a pizza stone, be sure to pull it out for this recipe - now, you don't need one to make this, but it sure helps getting that crisp golden crust! I shaped this into a round as that's what our stone looks like, but if you use a baking sheet, just roll out the dough to fit inside. As the dough was resting, we began by creating the base flavor - a layer of soft golden onions. I like to add a couple pinches of salt to the onions when they cook, even though the original recipe didn't call for it, as we find it helps the onions release their moisture and moves the process along.

Pear and Blue Cheese FlatbreadWhen the onions are done, they are drizzled with tangy balsamic vinegar and chopped fresh sage to freshen them up. Once they are spread over the par-baked crust, firm slices of crisp pears are arranged on top, followed by crunchy toasted walnuts and a sprinkling of blue cheese. After being assembled, it goes back into the oven to finish off the crust and melt the cheese. Between the juicy pears, pungent blue cheese and sweet onions, this bold golden flatbread had a multitude of textures with an alluring bite that made it hard to stop eating and much more pleasurable that a salad!

Pear and Blue Cheese Flatbread

3 comments:

  1. I have a recipe for pizza dough that I make all the time but I'm tempted to try yours. I love to make it in the food processor also and baking it on the stone. Makes the difference. Nice combination of blue cheese, onions and pears. That pizza looks really good.

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  2. Wow that is quite a pizza!! I would love to eat that for dinner. Sounds similar to a Galette I made a few weeks ago.

    Sharona May
    http://birdfood-sharona.blogspot.com/

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  3. Helene - We really like this dough and it is quite versatile!

    Sharona - Thank you!

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