Margherita pizza

      Yes, I've done a pizza blog already (see January 30, 2011).  However, this pizza was so good that I had to blog about it!  I remember the first time I had Margherita pizza.  I was 19 and on a Contiki bus tour with my high school friends, Gayana and Javier.  We had just entered Italy and stopped off at a gas station/food stop.  Now, we had been warned before that the "Italians don't make pizza like Americans.  They tend to clump things together rather than spread them out."  Sure enough, that was what we found when we went in the gas station.  However, I still loved the basil/mozzarella/tomato combination.  Shortcut to eleven years later when the same girl finds herself with too many tomatoes and basil leaves....

Pizza margherita (Katie style)

Ingredients:

1/2 batch of pizza dough (for a recipe, see my 1/30/11 blog)
fresh mozzarella cheese, shredded
tomatoes, cut thinly
garlic, sliced thinly
basil
olive oil
salt
pepper
hot pepper, optional

Procedure:

1) Preheat the oven to 450 F.
2)Roll out the pizza dough as thin as you can on a pizza peel.  Note that this will take time and patience!  Using your knuckles to push the dough towards the edge is a good way to get a crust.
3) Once the dough is stretched to the edge, cover the pizza dough with olive oil. 
4) Put salt, pepper and hot pepper on the olive oil-covered dough. 
5) Evenly distribute the thin slices of garlic.  The more, the better!
6) Evenly distribute the basil leaves on top of the garlic.
7) Cover with the mozzarella cheese.  Add some more basil.
8) Layer on the tomatoes.
9) Cook in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until pizza is bubbly and the crust is a nice golden brown.
10) Put some more basil on top of the hot pizza.
11) Slice and enjoy!

     This was the first time I had made a thin-crusted pizza.  Normally, I don't like tomatoes but they were really delicious roasted on the pizza.  As you can probably tell from the recipe, I like a lot of garlic and basil on my pizza.  Adjust accordingly to your taste.  Enjoy!