Roasted Garlic Pizza...

We've prepared a few unusual (for us at least) pizzas as of late, so this time we kept it on the simplistic side with a Roasted Garlic Pizza for our weekly Friday Night Pizza.

If you have yet to try out our favorite whole-wheat pizza dough, I don't know what else I could say or do to convince you to give it a go - it has really made this weekly pizza night come to life for us! While you don't have to a have a food processor to make it, it does make it a breeze to prepare in just a couple minutes worth of time.

Have you roasted your own garlic before? If not, I urge you to let this pizza be your first foray into the process. It is dead simple - remove the excess papery skin from your head of garlic (enough so you can see the cloves, but leave each one encased in their own skin), cut off the tips of the garlic to expose the cloves (the opposite side from the roots) and drizzle the cut side with olive oil. Enclose the head in a piece of foil, place it in the heated oven and let it roast, giving you a whole new garlic experience to enjoy.

As it roasts, the harsh, firm and raw garlic transforms into soft, sweet and tender cloves that can be used in so many ways. For our purposes tonight, we squeezed the mellow cloves out from the head and mashed them all together. This makes it a snap to spread the enticing paste across your stretched out piece of dough. On top of the smeared garlic, we rubbed a bit of dried sage and then deluged the top with shredded mozzarella and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheeses. For a touch of spice, a hefty pinch or two of crushed red pepper finished off the top.

After I glided the pizza from the peel to the fiery hot stone in the oven, I don't think Jeff took his eyes off the glass door for a minute. Thanks to the handy oven light, he was raptured by the pizza as the crust turned from tan to golden and the cheeses ran into each other, bubbling and oozing into a sheet of melted gratification. You can certainly change up the cheeses to your choice - provolone, Gruyère, Fontina or Asiago would be pleasing... or go crazy and create a blend! Crispy thin crust, lots of cheese and that smooth layer of garlic hiding underneath - you can bet that we stuffed ourselves silly with this pizza. Leftovers? Ha... I doubt it will happen - one of us will finish off the last couple pieces before the night is out!

Recipes

Roasted Garlic Pizza