brussel sprout lovers pizza

This is a marriage of two loves: white pizza and brussel sprouts.

I must admit, I’m fairly new at eating these beauties. I can distinctly remember a time when a cousin of mine was over (he’s a fellow foodie), and we were talking vegetables. He brought up brussel sprouts with much excitement and I pretty much curled up my lip. He was very surprised, and now I know why.

I like to blame this on my Italian America upbringing…I think. Really, I’m not sure. Do they eat a lot of brussel sprouts in Italy?

I think what converted me is the cooking method: these have to be a bit charred in order to bring out the flavor. At least that’s the way I like them. I also love them with a little bacon, but they are just as delicious without bacon if you’re not a meat eater (although if you’re not a meat eater, you probably haven’t read this far…..)

I’m still making pizza weekly. This week it was this brussel sprout pizza, along with my husband’s favorite buffalo chicken pizza, and plain ole regular for the kiddos. Serve a big salad beforehand and call it a meal!

My dough was still a bit cold when I took it out of the fridge. It’s a little harder to stretch when that happens, but the  oven spring is great when you use cold dough!

One thing that I learned this week is that I prefer balling my dough and then placing it in a plastic container instead of a ziploc baggie since it was a little difficult to take out of the bag, and I had to re-ball it (you can see that in the photo above…bottom of dough ball). It worked out okay though.

While I usually roast the brussel sprouts, I opted to cook them in the cast iron pan. I used to hate cooking in my cast iron pan, probably because I need to season it better, but I’ll revisit that when I can use the outdoor grill again in the spring.

This pizza was cooked on a baking steel. I used my IR gun to test the temperature of my baking steel and it doesn’t seem to get as hot as my baking stone did. I’m not sure if this is because this baking stone is not as thick as my stone was or if because of the materials used…the bottom of the pizza cooked fairly well though. So, it’s all good!

brussel sprout lovers pizza

5 from 1 vote

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Servings: 3

Author: Marie

Ingredients

• ▢ pizza dough , 11.5 ounces ball
• ▢ hardwood-smoked bacon , 6 to 7 strips cooked and chopped
• ▢ brussel sprouts , ½ pound (3 to 4 cups)
• ▢ red onion , finely diced, about ¼ cup
• ▢ garlic cloves , 2 minced
• ▢ olive oil , 2 tablespoon plus more for drizzling
• ▢ parmesan cheese , ¼ cup or to taste
• ▢ table salt , ¾ teaspoon
• ▢ red pepper flakes , ½ teaspoon
• ▢ fresh ground black pepper

Instructions

• Place pizza stone or pizza steel in oven (I place mine within 6 to 8 inches of top of oven) and preheat at 550 degrees
• Remove dough from refrigerator and set on well floured surface; sprinkle flour on top and set aside while you prepare topping and heat oven
• Wash and trim brussel sprouts, cut into halves or quarters (depending on size) and set aside.
• In a cast iron pan (or nonstick pan), heat 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat, and add garlic and onions.
• Stirring constantly to prevent garlic from browning, continue to cook for about 2 minutes.
• Add brussel sprouts and reduce heat to medium and continue cooking for about 10 minutes or until tender. Stir occasionally and scrape the bottom of the pan to prevent sticking.
• Remove from heat and season with salt, fresh ground pepper, and red pepper flakes.
• Add ½ of the bacon and gently combine/stir.
• Prepare your pizza peel by flouring it well (rub with flour) or cut a piece of parchment paper
• Open the dough ball and stretch to 12 inches or 14 inches for very thin pizza
• Set pizza shell on pizza peel or parchment paper, and then drizzle with a bit of olive oil.
• Scatter brussel sprout on top and add the remaining bacon.
• Sprinkle parmesan on top of pizza
• Transfer pizza to pizza stone and reduce heat to 500 and bake for 5 to 7 minutes or until browned.
• Remove from oven with pizza peel, slice and serve.

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