Friday, February 20, 2009

Three-Cheese Pizza...

Pizza night is here once again! I'm glad we decided to do this on Fridays - what better way to start the weekend?! For this week's pie, we kept it pretty simple and uncomplicated with this Three-Cheese Pizza.

Using our convenient and favorite whole-wheat pizza dough as a base, we baked the stretched round on our well-used pizza stone until it was just lightly golden to give it a head start. Once we whisked it off the stone, the top was showered in shreds of fresh mozzarella cheese. It can by a little tricky to shred the fresh cheese, but one way to help that is to stick the cheese in the freezer for just 15 minutes or so to give the ball a little substance to work with. If you'd rather not go that route, I'm sure that thinly slicing it instead would work just fine.

Over the mozzarella, we dropped small dollops of ricotta cheese, followed by a shower of fresh grated Pecorino Romano to lend a salty punch. Speckled with coarse black pepper, the pizza went back into the oven to melt the cheese and finish crisping that thin crust. Served with a sprinkling of crushed red pepper (couldn't help it!) and fresh parsley for a pop of color, I don't think there will be any leftovers of this pizza to enjoy tomorrow... while there are couple slices left, I think they'll be gone before the night ends!

The three cheeses worked quite well in harmony with each other - the mozzarella melted beautifully to connect and fill in any uncovered holes, the ricotta bumps added creamy bursts while the Pecorino finished it off with a bang. I do think I would add one more thing next time - as soon as the crust came out of the oven the first time, I'd run a sliced clove of garlic over the warm base for a faint garlicky whisper underneath the cheese.

Recipes

4 comments:

  1. Joe,

    I just want to thank you for your persistence in Friday night pizza. It only took me about 4 months to finally decide I was going to make that darn pizza dough! I loved it. It was so easy. I made it with all whole-wheat flour and took out 1 T. of oil and replaced with honey. You do a great job with your blog!

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  2. I just stumbled onto your blog and I'm so impressed! Great job on everything. This pizza looks fabulous.

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  3. This pizza looks and sounds delicious. I made stuffed shells with ricotta, mozarella and parm last night :) You can't go wrong with that combination!

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  4. FoodQ - I'm glad you gave it a shot!

    Sugar D - Thanks!

    Karen - That is true!

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