Tomato Pizza
Pizza with tomatoes could not have appeared in Italy any earlier than the 16th century, since tomatoes reached Europe at about that time. The first recipes using tomatoes date from exactly this period. “Golden apple,” pomo d’oro in Italian, is what ripe tomatoes were called. The ancient Aztecs said something very similar: tomatl.
In the wild regions of South America you can still find local uncultivated varieties, and, as I was told, local farmers often gather wild tomatoes the way we pick blueberries.
At first tomatoes were considered inedible and were used for decoration. They even tried to poison some famous people with this fruit, though without success.
Today tomatoes are perhaps the most popular vegetable crop. They have high nutritional value, excellent dietary qualities, and a tomato is a very beautiful vegetable to look at. Although, as I understand it, a tomato is a berry. We eat them fresh, canned, and fermented tomatoes — a masterpiece among national appetizers. Around the world tomatoes are also widely used dried and sun-dried. For example, the famous eggplant dish imam bayildi is made with sun-dried tomatoes.
In Italy, many dishes of rice, pasta and dough are simply unthinkable without tomatoes. They preserve tomatoes in a less familiar way there: they can the pulp. People just buy a jar of tomato pulp and use it in all kinds of dishes. Here, besides fresh tomatoes good for appetizers, we mostly use tomato paste and tomato juice. Oh, and I forgot ketchup, if it has any tomato in it. Still, making tomato sauce at home is not difficult at all.
In Italy the vast majority of pizza recipes use tomato sauce. Usually it is tomato pulp with garlic, spices and olive oil. The mixture is simmered in a pan and then part of the moisture is cooked off. Using ketchup for homemade pizza is considered sacrilege.
I have seen many good tomato pizza recipes. Sometimes it’s hard to catch the difference and understand why pizzas made from almost the same recipe turn out so different.
Pizza with tomatoes is a simple and very tasty pizza. It is based on classic Italian recipes. The ingredients are tomatoes, cheese, fresh herbs and olive oil. Incredibly simple and incredibly tasty.
Ingredients
34 cm pizza
- Pizza dough 400 g
- Tomatoes 0.5 kg
- Parmesan 50 g
- Mozzarella 150 g
- Basil 1-2 sprigs
- Garlic 1-2 cloves
- Salt, oregano, black pepper to taste
Step-by-step recipe
It suddenly occurred to me: why are pizzas so different when the ingredients are almost the same? Pizza with tomatoes is special every time.
Take pizza marinara, for example. Here everyone is absolutely sure that marinara means lots of seafood, and nothing else. In fact, marinara means the pizza is made with “marinara” sauce, a mix of tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and spices. Such a sauce keeps for a long time, and it was used to feed sailors going to sea for long periods. Vitamins, too. Hence marinara.
Isn’t it all almost the same? Probably, besides the ingredients, every pizza gets an idea and a soul, which is an essential part of pizza and affects it a great deal.
Make the dough. The pizza dough recipe, which you can’t get wrong or spoil, I have already published. It’s all very simple, and judging by readers’ comments, it works for everyone. Put the dough on the pan. Be sure to grease the pan lightly with a little olive oil. And prick the dough with a fork in a few places so that the steam that builds up doesn’t lift the pizza while it bakes.
Make the tomato sauce, either by the recipe I gave as salsa di pomodoro. Or do it the way I did today.
Put half of the prepared tomatoes in a deep bowl and pour boiling water over them so that it covers them completely. Leave for exactly 60 seconds. Then cool the tomatoes under cold running water. Cut each tomato in half crosswise and scoop out all the seeds with a small spoon. The skin comes off easily; throw it away too.
Dice the tomato flesh, the way vegetables are cut for Olivier salad.
Peel the garlic and mince it any way you can: grate it on a fine grater, crush it with a garlic press or pound it in a mortar.
Pour 2 tbsp olive oil into a small frying pan and heat it. Add the tomato flesh and the minced garlic. Add a little salt and pepper and a scant teaspoon of sugar (4 g). Stir everything and simmer in the uncovered pan, stirring occasionally.
The sauce should become quite thick but still runny, like sour cream. By the way, if you add chili, you get an excellent sauce for shashlik.
Spread the freshly made sauce over the dough on the pan. Be sure to coat the rim too, because it gets the least topping.
Cut the mozzarella into thin slices and arrange them over the whole pizza. Or, which is much easier, grate the mozzarella on the coarsest grater.
Sprinkle the mozzarella with finely chopped basil. You need only a little basil, otherwise it will overpower the tomato flavor and aroma of the pizza, as it is a very fragrant herb.
Sprinkle the pizza with dried oregano.
Keep one small tomato; the pizza will be decorated with it.
Cut the remaining tomatoes in half and remove the seeds. You can leave the skin on. If the skin bothers you, remove it after scalding the tomatoes. Cut the prepared tomatoes into very thin slices. Lay the tomato on the greased dough, spreading it evenly.
Grate the Parmesan. I read today that the harder the Parmesan, the finer it should be grated, so that it melts and bakes better. I do it like this: with hard Parmesan, I grate it on a fine grater, then put the grated Parmesan in a blender and grind it further. It comes out like grains of sand. It works great!
Sprinkle the pizza with grated Parmesan, thoroughly and generously, right up to the rim.
Lay large pieces of the tomato you kept for decoration on top of the Parmesan. Press it down slightly onto the pizza.
Then put the pizza in the oven, or in a wood-fired oven if you have one. Heat the oven to 200°C. Pizza with tomatoes bakes in 20 mins, but it’s still worth checking for doneness.
The finished pizza with tomatoes cuts very well on a wooden board.
Cut the pizza with a pizza wheel into 6-8 slices.
Start eating right away, while the pizza with tomatoes is hot.
Pizza with tomatoes, like any pizza, is at its best while it’s still hot.
Calories and macros
177 kcal
100 g
- Protein8.2 g19% of kcal
- Fat6.5 g34% of kcal
- Carbs20 g47% of kcal
Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.
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