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Great Pizza Recipes
Pizza is a popular dish invented in Italy, and found in most cuisines around the world. Pizza often starts with a flat, round, homemade crust, is topped with tomato sauce and cheese and baked until the cheese topping is golden brown. Pizza chefs have created remarkable new offerings that include thick crusts; thin crusts, stuffed crusts, and offer an infinite number of toppings that make pizza a great dish served any time of the day from breakfast to dessert.
Pizza is most often baked over direct heat, but can be grilled or prepared and baked in a special pan. A pizza crust offers the perfect canvas for creating your own personal pizza from your favorite fresh ingredients.
GreatPizzaRecipes.com presents a growing collection of the best pizza recipes for creating wonderful pizza dishes suitable for serving at any meal or for enjoying later as leftovers. You’ll find recipes for creating perfect crusts, with delicious sauces and toppings, prepared in the oven or grill. Visit GreatPizzaRecipes.com often!
Featured Pizza Recipes:
Gourmet Pizza Recipes Mediterranean Style
Gourmet pizza recipes are well worth making because they feature wonderful ingredients and usually do not take long to make. If you are a fan of Mediterranean food, you will like the following gourmet pizza recipe. Italian, Spanish, and Greek ingredients are used for this pizza.
You can also use optional extra ingredients such as chicken breast, pepperoni, salami, basil, bell pepper, or pine nuts. Rather than using a tomato-based sauce between the pizza crust and the toppings, this Mediterranean food pizza uses pesto sauce, which goes wonderfully with the different cheese flavors. This gourmet pizza recipe is healthy as well as being very tasty.
Gourmet Mediterranean Food Pizza
Ingredients -
1 cup pesto sauce
1 readymade pizza crust
1 cup chopped sun dried tomatoes
1 cup chopped artichoke hearts
1 cup wilted spinach
4 oz grated feta cheese
½ cup kalamata olives
4 oz mixture of grated asiago, mozzarella, and provolone cheeses
Olive oil
Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Brush the pizza crust with olive oil and spread pesto over the crust, leaving a ½ inch border.
Top with sun dried tomatoes, olives, artichoke hearts, and spinach.
Cover with cheeses.
Bake the pizza on an oven rack for 10 minutes or until the cheese has melted.
Cool for 5 minutes then slice and serve.
(Serves 6)
Photo Description:
Doesn't this pizza make your mouth water? Look at those fresh ingredients piled on, all hot and toasted from the oven. All of the flavors have been intensified by baking, making every bite one to be savored. Look at the colors... the reds, greens, yellows and browns make the pizza look as appetizing at it tastes. Add your favorite toppings to get the flavors you love best, like mushrooms, peppers, artichoke hearts or cheese. Serve it up hot from the oven like this delicious pizza and you'll find yourself savoring every delicious morsel.
An Introduction to Pizza
Pizza is a deliciously versatile dish and comes in many varieties. There are different kinds of pizza dough and you can choose from a thin and crispy base, a deep fluffy dough base, or even a specialty dough like stuffed crust or whole wheat. As far as pizza toppings go, the sky is the limit. A tasty pizza sauce usually coats the pizza crust before the toppings are added.
Americans eat about three hundred and fifty slices of pizza every second. This is a hundred acres a day! Pizza is a thirty billion dollar industry in the United States every year and there are more than sixty thousand pizza parlors throughout the United States, selling three billion pizzas a year. In New York alone, there are nine thousand pizzerias. The most popular ethnic food in America is Italian and pizza is the best loved Italian food outside of Italy.
The Truth about Pizza and Health
Is pizza healthy, you might ask? Of course, it is possible to get healthy pizza, just as it is possible to get unhealthy pizza. When making your own pizzas at home, the great thing is that you have free rein over the ingredients used. A healthy pizza might be a whole-wheat thin crust, a tomato sauce, and a roasted vegetable topping with cheese. You can have healthy meat, fish, or vegetable toppings.
A lot of people ask the question is pizza healthy and it depends on how it is made. A thick fluffy base topped with a high fat butter rich sauce and three inches of meat, cheese and creamy topping ingredients is going to be less friendly to your waistline than a thin crust roasted vegetable pizza!
Pizza used to be considered a fast food along with hamburgers, French fries, and other high calorie snacks but not every pizza recipe uses fatty ingredients or calorific toppings. A homemade pizza with vegetables and chicken and a sprinkling of cheese is actually a healthy meal.
Which is the Best Loved Pizza?
Favorite pizza toppings vary around the world but America's favorite pizza is pepperoni, according to research, and a massive thirty six percent of pizza orders include this ingredient! The most popular pizza around the world is pizza margarita, which is simply mozzarella cheese and tomatoes. Sixty two percent of Americans prefer meat-topped pizzas and the remaining thirty-eight prefer vegetarian pizza.
One of the best-loved pizza variations is BBQ, followed by Mexican, five cheeses, no cheese pizza pies, and traditional Italian pizzas such as new potato, Florentine, and margarita. Gourmet pizza toppings such as artichoke hearts, crayfish, oysters, eggplant, dandelions, and Cajun shrimp are gaining ground in some parts of the United States. Newer trends include Canadian bacon, duck, and venison.
Mushrooms, sausage, extra cheese, onion, and green bell pepper are the most commonly requested pizza toppings after pepperoni. So, what is the least favorite pizza topping? The answer to that is an anchovy.
Phoning for a pizza is something that most of us have done at some point but nothing beats the flavor of homemade pizza. Not only can you be creative with the dough, pizza sauce, and toppings but also you can keep your pizzas healthy as well as flavorful. You can even make a half and half pizza, maybe with meat toppings on one side and vegetables and cheese on the other side, if your family has different food preferences.
Pizza is versatile, easy to make and very tasty. No, wonder Americans claim pizza to be one of their favorite foods of all time!
Inside Great Pizza Recipes
Pizza Recipes
Mix and Match Pizza Recipes - There are many pizza dough recipes, pizza sauce recipes, and pizza topping varieties that coming up with a new pizza is fairly easy. You can mix and match different pizza components to come up with your ideal pizza. Alternatively, you can follow one of our delicious pizza recipes to create a classic pizza recipe...
Grilled Pizza Recipes
Grilled Pizza Recipes are Fun - Standing around the grill keeping an eye on chicken legs and burgers can be a bit of a chore but making grilled pizza recipes is a lot more fun. Grilling is an excellent cooking method for pizza because the dry direct heat cooks it just right, with a crispy base, hot toppings, and delicious melted cheese...
Meat Pizza
Rich and Satisfying Meat Pizza - For real carnivores, sometimes nothing but a richly topped meat pizza will hit the spot! You can use many types of meat to top pizza, including beef, ham, bacon, pork, duck, lamb and many more. Meat combinations such as pepperoni, ham, and spicy beef often work well in meat pizza recipes too...
Vegetable Pizza
Healthy and Flavorful Vegetable Pizza - We all know that vegetables are good for us but they do not have to be boring! Combining a crispy pizza dough with sliced vegetables and herbs is one of the nicest ways to make a delicious yet healthy dinner. There are lots of types of pizza and tasty vegetable pizza is a lot of people's favorite...
Pizza Sauce Recipe
The Best Pizza Sauce Recipe - Everyone has their favorite pizza sauce recipe and this might be a homemade herby tomato sauce or even a garlic and cream sauce. When making pizza recipes, the toppings do dictate the sauce in a way because you will not want to overpower them but you can also be creative with the sauce ingredients, perhaps adding garlic or a different herb to make the sauce unique...
Pizza Dough
Tips for Making Pizza Dough - If you are new to making pizza dough, there are a couple of ways around it. Either you can cheat and buy readymade pizza dough or you can make some easy pizza dough recipes. There are different recipes for pizza dough, depending on whether you are looking for a thin and crispy base, a deep pan style base or even something trickier like a stuffed crust pizza base...
Pizza Articles
Pizza Articles - Cooking Tips, History and More - Did you ever wonder how pizza originated, what the first pizza toppings were, which pizzas are preferred in other countries or about the history of Pizza Hut? Pizza fans will find pizza facts like these fascinating and sometimes it is very interesting to look back in time and find out how pizza has changed from its conception to present day pizza trends...
Five Reasons to Make Your Own Pizza Recipes
Pizza used to be found in Italian neighborhoods only but is now a mainstream phenomenon all over the world. It is a comfort food and each country and culture has adapted the recipe to suit their tastes. Here are five reasons why making your own pizza is the best way to enjoy this delicious treat.
1. It is easy to make pizza. You can make pizza dough recipes with basic kitchen tools and you can make whichever type of dough you prefer. Making a sauce and adding toppings are simple too. The hardest part of making your own pizza is cleaning up afterwards!
2. Homemade pizza is good value. The price of making your own pizza is much less than visiting a pizzeria or ordering a pizza. You can buy ingredients in bulk and freeze what you do not use. You can also buy ingredients on sale and use them as toppings.
3. Pizza is healthy and you can use top quality, fresh ingredients. Vegetables are great on pizza and you can use bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, corn, fresh garlic, tomatoes and more. You can make healthy pizza dough recipes too, which are usually thin and crispy and you can make whole-wheat dough if you want.
4. It is a lot of fun to make pizza yourself. You can get the kids involved in saying what toppings go on the pizza, kneading the dough for the crust and arranging the toppings on the pizza. Older kids can help to slice and chop the topping ingredients. Even if you are only making pizza for yourself, it is still an enjoyable experience and you can get really creative with it.
5. You can learn how to make pizza dough in stages. First of all, you can buy a readymade pizza crust and use that. Next, you can buy fresh dough from the bakery and work with that because you will gain experience in shaping your pizza and working with dough. Finally, you can make your own pizza dough recipe.
Making pizza gets easier every time you do it and very soon after starting, you will be making healthy pizza recipes for the family, having fun and saving money!
Try These Delicious Pizza Recipes
Here is just a sampling of our delicious pizza recipes you'll find plenty more inside the site.
Three Meat Pizza Meat Lovers Pizza Bake
Baked Potato Pizza with Summer Vegetables
Easy Chicken Parmesan Pizza Recipe
Follow Our Pinterest Food Board
The History of Pizza - Ancient Greece to Today
The type of pizza we know was born in Naples, which is in the Campania region of Italy. However, there have been many types of flavored flatbreads in ancient and medieval times which are similar to pizza so the exact origin of the pizza is not altogether clear and it is hard to say when the first pizza was invented or who invented pizza.
Bread is one of the oldest foods and people in ancient history would add other ingredients to bread to make it more interesting. This is perhaps the true pizza origin. The ancient Greeks used to top their bread with herbs, garlic, and onion to make it more flavorful. These types of flatbreads are from the Mediterranean region. Some people believe that pizza evolved from the Chinese green onion pancake, which Marco Polo introduced to Italy but the most likely pizza origin is ancient Greece.
Learn More About the >> History of Pizza
Why Pizza is Wonderfully Unique
The hundreds of unique pizza recipes are one reason why pizzas are so well loved. There are plenty of pizza dough recipes, pizza sauce recipes and everyone has their favorite combination of toppings to finish off the pizza just right. You can eat pizza hot with the melted cheese still dripping or cold the next day as part of a packed lunch. Most of us will happily admit that we have enjoyed leftover pizza for breakfast!
If you like unique pizzas or you are looking for a unique pizza recipe, the endless combinations are sure to delight you. Sometimes the most simple pizza recipes are the best and a plain pizza margarita, which is mozzarella and tomato, can hit the spot, especially when a few herbs are cleverly added too. Basil goes very nicely with cheese and tomato and traditional Italian pizza fans would heartily agree. Parsley is nice on potato pizza and cilantro enhances oriental flavored pizzas and Mexican pizza recipes.
New Pizza Topping Trends
You might think you have tried most types of pizza but there are new varieties appearing all the time. The latest gourmet toppings include spinach, crayfish, dandelions, sprouts and venison and worldwide toppings include squid, fried egg, cream, pickled ginger, salmon and coconut (not all at once, of course!).
Whether you prefer thin and crispy vegetarian pizza recipes, deep pan pizzas topped with lashings of melted cheese and different kinds of meat or something else, there is a pizza recipe for you. Making your own pizza is fun and you can even make grilled pizza if you have friends over. Even if you have a sparse kitchen without pizza stones, pizza cutters or fancy dishes, you can still make a deliciously unique pizza recipe.
Useful Pizza Cooking Tips
The best pizza-cooking tip is not to be afraid to be creative. Italian chefs are known for having a great zest for life and a love of food, drink, and good living. The Italians love rich, satisfying foods and the combination of freshly made dough; ripe tomatoes, fresh vegetables, tasty meat, and melted cheese make pizza one of their favorite foods. There are lots of pizza recipes for you to try out, suitable for meat lovers, vegetarians, seafood fans and more.
If the pizzas you have been enjoying have been of the take out variety as opposed to homemade, it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with dough recipes, pizza sauce recipes, and possible pizza toppings. You might want to start off making pizza recipes, which use readymade dough and then move on to making the whole pizza from scratch.
Find More Pizza Cooking Tips for Perfect Pizza Recipes everytime on our Pizza Cooking Tips page. In addition, you can find other helpful info in the article section on ways to simplify your pizza making experience.
Find additional "Pizza Recipes" on our Pizza Recipes index page just look trough our pizza categories to find that perfect pizza pie treat for your dinner tonight. Whether that be a healthy vegetarian pizza or a carnivores meat pizza dream. We have everything from pizza sauce and dough recipes to wonderful grilled pizza choices.
Pizza around the World
Perhaps you like to order or make the same kind of pizza each time you eat it. Maybe you are a meat feast pizza fanatic or addicted to roasted vegetable and cheese pizza. There are so many different pizza varieties and recipes that it is possible to make a different pizza each time you eat it. Pepperoni pizza will never cease to be popular; margarita pizza is well loved all over the world but what about in other countries? What types of pizza do they prefer?
Favorite Pizzas in Other Countries
Toppings vary a lot around the world, depending on regional preferences and tastes. Australians like pineapple and shrimp on their pizzas or BBQ toppings. Curry is a well-loved topping in Pakistan. Costa Ricans like coconut and red herring is the preferred topping in Russia. Russians also like mockba, which is a combination of tuna, salmon, sardines, mackerel, and onion. You would definitely need a breath mint after eating that concoction!
Eel and squid are the pizza toppings of choice in Japan and green peas feature on many pizzas in Brazil. Bacon, onion, and fresh cream are favorite pizza toppings in France and vegetables for pizza toppings are grown in greenhouses in Iceland because of the lava terrain.
Saudi Arabian meat toppings must be beef because pork is not consumed in Muslim countries. The Double Dutch is a popular pizza in the Netherlands. This is a double beef, double cheese, and double onion pizza. Indians like minced mutton, tofu, and an Indian cheese called paneer and pickled ginger on their pizzas.
Different Types of Pizzas
If you know about Italian pizza history, you will know that the original Italian pizza with mozzarella, tomatoes and basil is still very popular today but there are many other different kinds of pizza too. Chicago pizza is another firm favorite and this pizza is a deep-dish style with plenty of tasty toppings. The first Italian pizzeria, Antica Pizzeria, opened in Naples in 1738. The first United States Pizzeria opened in 1895 in New York City.
If Chicago style pizza is not to your liking, what about NY pizza? Why is NY pizza so good, many people ask, and the answer to that is that the wide, thin, and foldable slices are the closest pizza to the original Italian recipe? Many famous pizzerias are named after where they are located, such as Boston Style Pizza, California Pizza, and New York Pizza.
You might be wondering what a Greek style pizza recipe is. These pizzas often feature Greek ingredients such as kalamata olives, gyros, feta cheese, and spinach. Greek pizza is baked in a pan instead of on pizza oven bricks, like an Italian pizza would be. The crust is chewy, thick, and quite oily. Greek immigrants set up the first Greek style pizzerias and these usually sell other Greek specialties on the premises, such as gyros and Greek salads.
Mexican pizza can refer to Mexican pizza toppings such as tomatoes, corn, ground beef, and Mexican cheese. Alternatively, a Mexican pizza can use corn tortillas instead of an Italian style dough base.
Many nations have taken pizza recipes to their hearts and simply adapted the toppings to suit their own preferences. You can have even more versatility and freedom when making homemade pizza recipes. Perhaps you would like to try making a Mexican pizza recipe or a creamy bacon and onion French style pizza.
Webmaster Notes:
Please bare with me we are recoding the site and switching to the new wider format on our latest revision of our totally CSS based design. Some things may look a little strange through out the day as I go through each page and correct photo sizes and some other elements as we bring the site up to the standard of our other sites. Great Pizza is on one of our earlier designs so we want to give it the same great functionality of all our newer sites so you can better enjoy it.
Thanks for visiting today,
Christine