Fig Prosciutto Pizza

Well it's Pizza night in our house again! As I've mentioned before, it's so easy to make your own pizza and once you have it'll be hard to buy those "frozen" pizzas at the store. I mean they are great in a pinch but not that great when you've made it yourself. Even those pre-made crusts aren't bad, but really you could use anything as your Pizza canvas - Naan bread, tortillas, english muffins, a baguette - the possibilities are Endless!

Not gonna lie - this recipe sounded weird! But most of the time the ones we are sketchy about end up being sooooo good, which ended up being the case.  So I dove in and made this pizza for us a few nights ago and the combination of sweet (Fig preserves) + salty (Prosciutto) + pepper (arugula) = Happy Mouths! :-)

The recipe is by PW (Pioneer Woman) and she really does have a beautiful cookbook! It just inspires you to cook even if you don't want to. She makes it look like art... And I love art! I am lazy when it comes to pizza dough because I haven't been able to replicate the one we buy at Publix - so I bought the pre-made dough. But, then I got a wild hair and decided to give PW's recipe a whirl for the dough as it looked so easy. The dough was better than most I've made but slightly dense and didn't have the crispy outside and airy light inside. I will probably try this recipe again just to see how it comes out.

ingredients

Pizza Dough
• 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• Scant 1/4 cup olive oil, plus more for bowl

Pizza Topping
• 1/2 cup fig preserves
• kosher salt
• 12 oz fresh mozzarella, sliced thinly (I used the log that is pre-sliced)
• 8 oz prosciutto, thinly sliced
• 12 oz arugula
• shaved Parmesan cheese

directions

Make the crust...
1.  Add the yeast to 3/4 cup warm (not lukewarm) water in a glass measuring cup (I used a 4 cup glass measuring cup) and let sit for 10 minutes.

2. In a stand mixer, using a paddle attachment, add the flour and salt and with the mixture running on the lowest speed, drizzle in the olive oil slowly. Keep mixing until it's mixed through. Now, pour the yeast/water mixture and mix until JUST combined.

3. Coat a medium glass bowl with a little bit of olive oil, coating all sides of that bowl. Add the dough to the bowl forming into a ball. Toss the ball around the bowl to coat all sides in the oil so it won't stick to the bowl. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and allow to rise for at least an hour or up to a few days in the fridge.

Create the pizza...

1. Preheat oven to 500º and arrange the rack to lowest position in your oven.

2. Roll out the pizza dough using flour and a bit of cornmeal to keep it from sticking. Roll the dough so it's nice and thin (but no holes). Spread a thin layer of the fig preserves over the top of the dough and season with kosher salt. Place the mozzarella slices on top of the fig preserves.

3. Bake the pizza for 15 minutes until the crust is golden all over and the cheese is melty and slightly browned. Remove from oven and drape the prosciutto slices all over the hot pizza immediately so they can get warmed through.

4. Let pizza rest 10 minutes. When serving pile some arugula and Parmesan cheese shavings on top.

This is a big pizza for 2 people so I would suggest not putting the arugula/Parmesan on top of the entire pizza so you can save the leftovers and reheat the slices then top with the arugula/Parmesan each time you serve. We ended up just eating the leftovers cold the next day for lunch - delish!

The pizza before adding the arugula and Parmesan on top

I really enjoyed this pizza - it wasn't on Q's top 5 pizzas I've made for him but he enjoyed it to say the least. He's just not a big prosciutto fan - I bought the Boar's head prosciutto from the deli for this recipe and even though it's a few bucks more it's definitely worth it!

Enjoy!