Baby potatoes, asparagus, and gouda cheese. A great spring meal or party snack. While it lasts, eat asparagus!
This time of year, asparagus begs to be used in many ways. A veggie peeler creates a wonderful green tangle that I like to sprinkle on pizza.
You may start spring right with roasted potato pieces and gouda cheese.
Pizzas cook faster and get extra-crispy when you crank up the oven.
After 10 to 12 minutes, each pizza should be golden brown and bubbling with melted cheese. Heaven.
While you cook the rest of the pizzas, let the hungry masses eat the first one.
Asparagus-Potato Pizza
Preparation time
COOK TIME: 20 minutes
TOTAL TIME: 60 minutes
SERVINGS: 4-6
Ingredients
- Two 1-pound balls of pizza dough, handmade or store-bought
- Baking sheets need cornmeal.
- Flour for rolling
- 16 ounces thinly sliced baby red or yellow potatoes
- 3 tablespoons plus more for drizzling olive oil
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1 pound of thick asparagus stalks
- Sliced Gouda or fontina cheese, 6 ounces
Method
- Prepare and heat the oven: If you have a pizza stone, place it on a lower rack. 550F is the maximum oven temperature.
- Pizza rounds should be pre-shaped and rested:
- On a well-floured counter, cut the dough into 4 pieces. One piece at a time, shape into a ball and press flat into a 1-inch disk, dimpling with your fingertips. Pre-shaping the dough makes it easier to work with later.
- Cover the first disk with a clean dishtowel and repeat with the remaining dough. While preparing the vegetables, rest the dough disks for 10–15 minutes. Before shaping, the dough relaxes.
- Precook the potatoes: Pile potato slices on a baking sheet. Add 1 tablespoon of oil, salt, and pepper. Toss and evenly spread.
- Bake potatoes for 10 minutes until cooked. Briefly cool.
- Prepare asparagus:Trim the asparagus spears’ bottoms by 1/2 inch. Shave the spears into long, thin strips with a vegetable peeler: grasp a spear by the blossom end and scrape along the length. Keep turning the stalk until you can’t scratch it. Slice the spear’s core into 1-inch sections.
- Toss all the asparagus in a basin with the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil, salt, and pepper. Leave aside.
- Shape the pizza rounds: Sprinkle cornmeal on a pizza peel, rimless baking sheet, or back of a baking sheet. (Bake the pizza on a baking sheet if you don’t have a pizza stone.)
- Hold one piece of dough at the edge and turn it like a steering wheel to let gravity pull it down (or roll with a rolling pin). Keep extending it until it’s a 10-inch circle or 12-by-8-inch oval.
- Place it on the pizza peel and shuffle the pan to prevent sticking (add cornmeal if needed).
- Bake the pizza with toppings: Top the pizza circle with one-fourth of the potatoes, cheese, and asparagus.
- If you don’t have a pizza stone, bake the pizza on a baking sheet.
- Bake for 10–12 minutes until the crust is brown and the cheese is bubbling. Remove the pizza from the oven with a pizza peel and place it on a cooling rack.
- Bake the remaining pizzas the same way. Two pizzas can be baked on a large pizza stone.
- Serve pizza hot from the oven! Instead of waiting, slice and serve each pizza as it comes out of the oven. Reheat any pizzas that cooled in the oven for a minute or two if you want to serve them all at once.