Olive Pizza with Sauce and Mozzarella

The dough and sauce

1. Stretch 400 g of ready-made yeast dough onto a pizza pan (our pizza comes out 34 cm across).

   

2. Make the olive sauce by a simple recipe, which has nothing exotic in it, or use store-bought. The sauce needs tomato pulp, olives and olive oil. It keeps very well in the fridge, so you can make it ahead.

The topping

3. Spread the sauce over the dough and sprinkle with olives. Spread 0.5 cup of sauce (100 ml) over the dough in an even layer, slice the black and green olives into rings and scatter them over the sauce. Keep a few rings back to decorate the topping. Also sprinkle on a pinch of dried oregano, which brings out the flavor of the sauce.

   

4. Lay on the prosciutto if you like. Whether to add meat to the pizza is a matter of taste. We use thin slices of prosciutto or inexpensive jamón about half the time. The slices are almost transparent and tear easily into pieces with your fingers. With this meat the pizza tastes different, but very pleasant, and the flavor of the olives isn’t drowned out. Lay the slices of ham over the olive sauce and press them lightly onto the dough with your hands.

   

5. Sprinkle the pizza with mozzarella and the remaining olives. For the topping we use mozzarella, usually the low-moisture kind, which works best. Grate the cheese on a coarse grater and cover the whole surface of the pizza with an even layer. There’s no need to pack the cheese down, as it melts beautifully. Put the remaining olive rings on top.

   

Baking

6. Bake the pizza for about 20 mins in an oven heated to 180°C. Judge by the underside of the dough: lift the edge with a knife. If the bottom of the dough is golden and has “dried out” a little, and the cheese has melted completely, the pizza is done. The dough holds the shape of the slices well and doesn’t sag. Take the pizza out of the oven and move it to a serving board.

   

Serving

7. Cut the pizza into 6 or 8 slices with a pizza wheel, as you prefer, and serve right away. While it’s hot, the flavor is soft, pleasant and delicate. To keep the taste of the topping true, we usually don’t add herbs at the end, although many people like them. Don’t reheat the pizza: the cheese will have set by then, and it doesn’t need to be melted again.

   

   As an extra addition to the topping you can add capers, which works well. We avoid spicy ingredients because we want to keep the olive flavor. If you add salami, you get a pizza that tastes of sausage, and the olives will barely be noticeable. Don’t add basil either, as its flavor and aroma are very intense.