What Veggie Delights is all about: I’m convinced that I can share with you some really amazing meatless dishes that you will love, even if you’re not a Vegetarian!
I’m a huge homemade pizza fan. We usually make our own homemade pizza at least every other week. The possibilities are endless, it’s an easy Vegetarian meal, and it makes for a fun and frugal date night at home. 
I found this margherita pizza recipe a couple weeks ago, while browsing the web for new meal ideas. I rarely follow a recipe for our pizzas, but this one looked especially delicious. So we gave it a chance, and it turned out to be the best homemade pizza we’ve ever had! The weird thing? No pizza sauce! It’s kind of more like a flatbread than a pizza, in all actuality. Nevertheless – YUMMY!
I used my own bread machine pizza dough, because it’s my tried and true pizza dough recipe that always works with any type of pizza. Other than that, I followed the recipe almost exactly. Oh – and this is NOT a recipe that you can skimp on the fresh basil and try to pull off the dry basil. Use the fresh basil – it brings so much flavor to the pizza, and you will be glad you did!
Margherita Pizza:
Ingredients:
- Pizza Dough (homemade or prepared from grocery store deli)
- 2 cans diced tomatoes, drained
- fresh basil leaves (about 10 to 20 leaves), cut up a bit to release some flavor
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano (I just eyeballed it and sprinkled to my liking)
- 1/2 teaspoon crushed or ground red pepper
- salt and pepper to taste
- 8 oz Italian cheese
Directions:
- Prepare your dough into 2 pizzas.
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
- If you want your crust on the crispy side, stick the pizza dough in the oven for a couple minutes before adding toppings.
- Spread some olive oil on each slab of pizza dough.
- Top the pizza dough with diced tomatoes, fresh basil, shredded cheese, oregano, red pepper, and salt/pepper.
- Cook in the oven until cheese is golden and crust is cooked. Every oven is different, but I would check it at 15 minutes, and then every 5 minutes after that.
- Enjoy!!!
What About You: What kinds of homemade pizza do you like making? Think you might give this one a try?
That’s actually my favorite pizza. I am not a fan of sauces so when I found that Publix made a Margherita pizza that didn’t have sauce, I tried it and loved it. I’ve made one homemade one with Publix’s pizza dough (from the bakery) and it turned out great. I however don’t use canned tomatoes. I know it’s more expensive but I can taste the difference in canned or fresh. Also, I made it with grape tomatoes and it added a little extra bite to it and tasted great. I’ll definitely have to try this recipe!
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Meagan Reply:
August 31st, 2010 at 6:38 pm
@Whitney, Cool!!
I can taste the difference in canned and fresh, too. Come to think of it – I’ll definitely be using fresh next time. I think I just looked at the recipe really fast and jotted down that I needed 2 cans, not really thinking about it. He He.
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This looks delicious and I probably will try it soon! Especially since I too can make the dough in my bread maker. That my favorite Saturday activity
BUT, I’ll probably be the only one who’ll eat it since my kids are so picky!
How much do you estimate this dish to cost?
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Meagan Reply:
August 31st, 2010 at 6:39 pm
@ChristinaLynn, Yay! Let me know how you like it! Hmmm…cost? I would say like $3 per pizza. Hard to say with olive oil, dough, and spices factored in…because I always have those on hand. The recipe makes 2 pizzas
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what exactly is Italian cheese? Mozarella?
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ChristinaLynn Reply:
August 28th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
@Jill, There is an Italian cheese blend that I believe Meagan is referring to. I think it has a few different cheeses in it, already shredded.
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Meagan Reply:
August 31st, 2010 at 6:40 pm
@Jill, There are many different types of Italian cheeses. That’s why I didn’t limit it – because people like different cheese. This recipe called for Mozzarella, but I just used the mixed 6-cheese Publix brand Italian (like Christina said above). Hope that helps!
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I actually worked in an Italian restaurant for five years making pizza. Lol. This is very true to the recipe of a restaurant except we would used fresh sliced plum tomatoes. But another quick an easy pizza dough recipe is homemade strombolis, pizza breads and calzones. All you need is pizza dough, ricotta cheese (for calzones only), mozzarella cheese, 2 egg yolks, some tomato or marinara sauce, parmasean cheese and a pinch of dried oregano. I would post it here but might be a little to long if you’re interested in the recipe feel free to email me at Shadus824@yahoo.com. Thanks and I’m looking forward to making my own margherita pizza soon!!!
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Meagan Reply:
August 31st, 2010 at 6:41 pm
@Tanya, Very Cool! Thanks for sharing!!
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