Pizza Margherita

If you have been reading here long, you know  how I love to make homemade pizza. The pizza toppings are usually determined by what we have on hand at the time.  And as summer comes around, Pizza Margherita is on the menu quite a bit.  It requires no sauce, only olive oil, fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden.

Note:  The picture above is half sauce, half olive oil. We ate too much of it before I took a picture of the whole thing!

Pizza Margherita is a very light, fresh and pretty healthy pizza recipe. The fresh sweet basil and flavorful summer tomatoes are really all you need with this one. I add a little salt to the tomatoes to bring out their flavor, but that is pretty much it.

If you aren’t in the mood to make a homemade pizza dough, just purchase either the canned version, or you can grab a roll of premade dough at your local supermarket bakery or pizzeria.

*Cooks Note:  The recipe below says to “chiffonade” the basil.  To do this simply take all the leaves and stack them, then roll them up, and slice them vertically to make thin strips as you see in the picture above.  They end up looking like thin strips. For more info, see my post, “How to Chiffonade.”

Pizza Margherita

Homemade Pizza Dough Recipe
2 tablespoons olive oil (enough to drizzle over pizza crust)
1-3 garden or roma tomatoes, sliced
2-3 tablespoons fresh basil, chiffonade*
1-2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
sea salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste

1. Follow homemade pizza dough recipe and precook. Or use a pre-made dough.
2. Drizzle the partially-cooked dough with olive oil, and top with sliced tomatoes, shredded mozzarella and basil.  Lastly, top with cracked pepper and sea salt.
3. Cook about 4-6 minutes or until the cheese is golden brown.

Note:  In the picture, you can see red sauce.  If you prefer, you can use that instead of the olive oil.