Broccoli Pizza

Make the dough. I’ve given the pizza dough recipe more than once: “Pizza dough“. To add some variety to the dough, I recommend letting it rest longer, more than 2 hours. Then knead it again and roll it out. Put it on a pan greased with olive oil, prick it with a fork, and let it rest for another 30 mins. The dough will be fluffier and much softer. Since the topping is bulky, the dough should be thicker too.

Make a tomato sauce with herbs, which Italians call salsa di pomodoro. It’s a wonderful substitute for ketchup, which so many people love. If making the sauce is a problem, you can just use tomato paste. But it’s better to chop the tomato pulp, add a pinch each of salt and black pepper and some sugar, stir, and cook off the excess moisture in a skillet. It’s guaranteed to taste better than plain tomato paste.

Frozen broccoli is fine, you just need to boil it. Drop the broccoli florets into boiling water and cook for 3–4 mins from when it returns to a boil. Sort through the cooked florets and remove the tough stems. Keep only the green top part of the broccoli. Large florets are best split into a few pieces.

Brush the dough on the pan with tomato sauce, spreading it evenly with a spoon. I recommend coating the pizza’s rim especially well, because it usually gets little topping, and the tomato flavor will improve the edge and make it very tasty.

Cut the tomato in half. Remove the white core. Slice the tomato into very thin slices, and you don’t have to remove the seeds. Arrange the tomato over the sauce, covering as much of the dough as you can. You can add a little pepper to the tomato, but it’s better to sprinkle it with dried oregano.

Peel the garlic cloves and cut them into very thin slices. Arrange the garlic over the tomatoes. We’ve found that fresh garlic on a pizza with a vegetable topping (tomato, broccoli, zucchini, eggplant, and so on) noticeably improves the overall taste and brings out the flavor of the main topping. And I won’t even mention the delicate aroma!

Arrange whole green basil leaves. It’s better not to chop the basil. Just pick a handful of leaves and lay them out. By the way, it’s best not to use lemon basil. Its aroma is too strong and the taste unusual.

Grate the mozzarella on a coarse grater. Even better, cut it into thin slices with a knife or shave it with the same knife to make mozzarella “shavings”. Sprinkle the mozzarella all over the pizza. Since mozzarella melts well, you don’t need to worry about covering every empty spot.

Arrange the boiled green broccoli florets over the mozzarella. For looks, I recommend placing the broccoli floret side up, pressing it lightly into the pizza, but not too much. Then the broccoli pizza will look very festive and please the eye.

Sprinkle the whole pizza generously with finely grated Parmesan. Try not to get Parmesan on the green broccoli florets.

Arrange the capers on top. Capers are salted or pickled unopened flower buds of a Mediterranean shrub. They add an important flavor and aroma typical of Mediterranean cooking.

Before baking the pizza, let it rest for 15 mins. Then put it in an oven heated to 200°C. Broccoli pizza bakes in up to 20 mins. That’s enough.

Arrange green basil leaves over the finished pizza, so the broccoli pizza looks pretty and green.

Cut the pizza into 6–8 slices with a pizza wheel.

By the way, I recently bought a wooden pizza board, matched to the diameter of my pan. What can I say… it’s great! Very convenient. It wipes clean easily, and the knife doesn’t damage it when you cut the pizza.

Broccoli pizza is served hot only!

I’ll just say that broccoli pizza is probably one of the best pizzas I make. And I had no idea it would turn out so tasty! It’s only a pity that there’s no way to convince some of my friends that a pizza without a huge amount of meat can be exceptionally good.