All right, so you don't need meat to make an amazing pizza.
You kind of want to approach a vegetarian pizza with kind of trying to confuse the mouth.
Different textures, different flavors.
Some roasted and caramelized, some others raw, a little bit more light.
So today, I'm going to make a version I absolutely love.
When you approach vegetables, you need to think about which ones need time to cook.
Things like mushrooms.
I have some beautiful little hedgehog mushrooms.
You can use creminis, portabellas.
You want to cook those ahead of time
There is so much moisture in mushrooms that you need to render that out.
That goes for eggplants as well.
Thicker vegetables, like peppers, you can roast ahead of time, because again, you only
have 7 minutes in the oven, which is not enough time to really cook the vegetables through.
Now, if you slice something really thin, like I have these Brussel sprouts and zucchini,
then it will have time to cook through.
You could shave some really thin mushrooms on the pizza, but again, it won't get cooked
through as if doing it in the pan beforehand.
You really need to measure which ones need cooked ahead of time and which ones go raw
right on the pizza.
A good way to test that is if you'll eat it in a salad, you can shave it raw on a pizza.
If not, you need to cook it before hand, then you need to add it after it's cooked.
So, to make my perfect vegetarian pizza, I'm going to start with some olive oil right on
the crust.
A good amount of olive oil.
You just kind of brush it all the way to the edges.
This helps the crust get nice and crispy and adds another little fattiness to the whole
entire thing.
Big pinch of kosher salt.
Awesome.
Now I'm just going to play with it.
Tomatoes sauce is not the highlight of my vegetarian pizza.
It's just kind of a side note.
So a little bit of tomato sauce will go a long way.
Just going press it all the way to the edges.
Awesome, that looks great.
Just enough.
Perfect!
I've got some zucchini here.
These are kind of fun.
They kind of lay, let them fall as they will.
The more you stick them up, the more the pizza will brown them in the oven and get those
nice charred bits.
Also looks absolutely beautiful.
I have some raw peppers, but again, I sliced them thin so they will cook really quickly.
I love, love mushrooms, so I cooked these ahead of time.
I sautéed them.
These are just some hedgehog mushrooms.
You can do any type of mushrooms.
This is eggplant that I roasted for about 20 minutes.
There is no way eggplant will cook through in your oven, so it falls under one of those
vegetables that you have to do ahead of time.
Perfect
I'm going to top this entire thing off with some shaved Brussel sprouts.
My absolute favorite.
They're sweet, they look gorgeous, and you kind of think you're being healthy even though
it's a pizza.
All right, look how beautiful that looks.
I'm going to finish it with some thyme, just to give the whole thing a little bit of an
herby back note.
And a touch more oil.
Beautiful.
This is going to get a little bit of parmesan right before hitting the oven.
That looks awesome.
All right, so this is going to go in the oven at 500 degrees about 7 or 8 minutes.
Take this whole thing and you're going to slide the parchment right onto the stone and
just forget about it.
So I can smell those vegetables caramelizing.
It's been about 7 or 8 minutes, 500 degrees.
Let's take a look.
Yep, completely cooked.
Beautiful.
Grab the parchment and all.
I love meat, but this is, you don't miss it an inch with this.
So, I just hold the parchment, and do my best to kind of let the pizza fall right off.
So, like any great pizza, I'm going to grab some really good olive oil, paint the outside
crust to give it a little bit of a sheen, a little more richness.
Get that all that goodness on your hands.
I grab some smoke salt to emulate being in a brick oven.
Then, you've got to do the parmesano reggiano thing right over the top.
Let it dance between all the different veg.
If that doesn't make you hungry, I don't know what vegetable pie will.