Homemade Pizza with Mushrooms, Goat Cheese, Tomatoes, and Kale

I love pizza. Hubby does too - he said I make the best pizza in the world. I know he's exaggerating (maybe not in the world but in town) - but is sure nice to hear :).

We have pizza pretty often, not so much in the summer but in the winter every other week we have pizza.

But this past weekend I was craving pizza and goat cheese, which is odd because I do not like goat cheese (and no I'm not pregnant or anything like that). This is just a craving. Plain hunger craving when I went grocery shopping.

So I made my usual pizza dough and topped it with sauteed mushroom, goat cheese, grape tomatoes, and kale.

It is so good.

My go-to pizza dough is from Williams Sonoma. I've tried other recipes but I keep coming back to that one. It is easy and really good. Even if I mess it up sometimes, it still turned out great. Like this time, somehow I couldn't roll it out to be as thin as usual.


Homemade Pizza with Mushrooms, Goat Cheese, Tomatoes, and Kale
Serves 2

Ingredients:
1/2 recipe Thin Crust Pizza Dough from Williams Sonoma
8 cremini/button mushroom, sliced into 1/4 inch thick
6 grape tomatoes, sliced in half
goat cheese, crumbled
2 stalk of kale, stems removed and cut into large pieces
4 Tbsp olive oil
dried oregano
salt and pepper

Method:
Make the Williams Sonoma pizza crust. You can follow all the steps in the recipe which calls for using the food processor to do all the work. If you don't have a food processor or too lazy to dirty it up (like me), then dump all the ingredients for the dough in a mixing bowl and mix it by hand or a wet/oiled wooden spatula. Once the dough comes together, knead it for 3 minutes in the bowl or on a floured surface.

After kneading, place the dough in a oiled bowl (I use the same bowl). Place the bowl in a warm place until doubled in size. This takes 1-2 hours.

While the dough is rising, sautee the mushroom. Heat up 2 Tbsp of oil in a pan over medium heat. Dump all the mushroom slices into the pan and sautee slightly, about 5 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees an hour before baking, with a pizza stone on the lowest rack.

Dust a pizza peel with cornmeal. Place the dough on it and roll out to a 10 inch round (sometimes mine turn out more square or odd-shaped. Doesn't matter! It tasted good anyway :)).

With a brush, apply the 2 Tbsp of olive oil all over the dough, stopping about an inch off the end.

Season with oregano, salt & pepper.

Now you can proceed with decorating your pizza.

Place the mushrooms, goat cheese, tomatoes, and kale all over the pizza.

Slide the pizza onto the stone. Bake for 15 minutes, rotating the pizza halfway through baking.

Enjoy!

Note: You don't have to sautee the mushroom beforehand but I find they taste better this way. At times when I'm busy or in a pinch I have skipped the sauteeing. If you skip it, make sure you still toss the mushrooms in a bit of olive oil because otherwise they will burn slightly in the oven.