Truffle & Caramelized Onion Pizza
Ingredients:
- 1 lb Pizza Dough: Nancy Silverton has a great recipe, or you can buy pre-made dough to save a little time – I’m hooked on the Surfas brand
- Flour, for dusting
- Cornmeal, for dusting
- 1 onion, thinly sliced
- 2 tbsp. unsalted butter
- 2 tbsp. garlic olive oil
- 8 oz Sottocenere, or other truffle cheese, grated
- 2 oz Parmesan Reggiano, finely grated
- 1 tbsp. fresh thyme
- Sea salt, to taste
- White truffle oil, to taste
Caramelized Onions: Thinly slice onions, preferable on a mandoline so the slices are super thin & even. This allows them to cook more quickly and evenly, plus mandolines are fun (use protection).
Melt butter in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat (don’t use non-stick… it won’t caramelize as well). Add onions and saute, stirring occasionally until browned. This will take at least 20 minutes and your big pile of onions will shrivel into a tiny delicious heap.
Remove from the heat and spread on paper towels to blot dry.
Pizza: 1 hour before baking, place your pizza stone on the top rack in a cold oven and heat oven to 500 degrees F. If using the Convection Broil setting, place stone on the middle rack (otherwise the top would burn).
With lightly flour-dusted hands, stretch pizza dough into desired size. Don’t overwork it or the bread will get tough and weird (I overworked the one in this picture and it never quite recovered – remember, less is more). Scatter a little cornmeal on your big pizza spatula and lay pizza dough on top. Brush the entire pizza surface with garlic oil. Transfer pizza dough onto the pizza stone in the oven.
Bake for approx 2 min on Convection Broil or about 5-7 min in a 500 degree oven, until the crust is lightly browned on top. Either remove the parbaked crust from the oven to add toppings, or just pull out the oven rack (be careful, it’s really hot).
Scatter truffle cheese all over the pizza, leaving a naked 1 inch crust. Scatter parmesan on top. Add caramelized onions and sprinkle with thyme. Brush the crust with garlic oil. Return pizza to the oven and cook for another 2 min on Convection Broil or another 5-7 min in a 500 degree oven. The top should be bubbly and lightly browned and the bottom side of the pizza should be crisp and lightly browned. Go a few minutes longer if you like a particularly crisp pizza, just be careful not to let the top burn.
Remove pizza from oven and sprinkle with sea salt. Extra credit if you drizzle a little white truffle oil on top. Slice and serve!
