A little disclaimer before I get stuck into the post, I don’t know if it should be pizza blanca, pizza bianca or pizza blanco…. I’ve seen it written all ways. I’m going with pizza bianca, as that seems right enough.
So, what is pizza bianca?
Well, it’s basically pizza but without the the tomato sauce. Instead it uses crème fraîche or ricotta for the ‘sauce’, then it’s topped with usually mozzarella, garlic, a few herbs…
In this version, I’ve used some sweet caramelised onions which I had in the fridge from hotdogs the night before, crème fraîche and mozzarella. And to use up some of the courgettes that have taken over the greenhouse, I added some ribbons of courgette and the courgette flower for aesthetics — turns out they’re not that nice to eat when baked on top of a pizza, but looks pretty for the photo!
For the base, I’ve actually used a white bread mix as a substitute as I couldn’t get any bread flour. This was a 500g mix and it made four dinner-plate size pizzas. You could easily use a ready-made dough or even a plain shop-bought pizza base.
Here’s how I made…
Pizza Bianca with Courgette
Roll out and shape the dough, depending on how thick a crust you’d like.
Top the dough with the caramelised onions and dot small spoonfuls of crème fraîche.
Using a vegetable peeler, create ribbons of courgette. Scatter these across the pizza.
Add torn up mozzarella, I’ve used half a ball here.
Finish with a few shavings of Pecorino, a scatter of oregano leaves, salt and pepper, and a drizzle of oil — olive or rapeseed.
Bake in a hot oven until the base is crisp. This took about 10mins in my oven at 230•c
Ingredients
Directions
Roll out and shape the dough, depending on how thick a crust you’d like.
Top the dough with the caramelised onions and dot small spoonfuls of crème fraîche.
Using a vegetable peeler, create ribbons of courgette. Scatter these across the pizza.
Add torn up mozzarella, I’ve used half a ball here.
Finish with a few shavings of Pecorino, a scatter of oregano leaves, salt and pepper, and a drizzle of oil — olive or rapeseed.
Bake in a hot oven until the base is crisp. This took about 10mins in my oven at 230•c