Potato Pizza

This pizza is surprisingly good!

I’ve been hearing about potato pizza from my guy for a long time, and to be honest, I wasn’t really interested. For a long time. But I gave it a try recently, and it was actually really good! And then he asked if we could have it a week later for his birthday dinner, so I knew it was a winner. 

This is not the type of pizza that I am used to: no sauce, just salted potato slices and onion tossed in olive oil, and some rosemary and Pecorino cheese. But really good! I love the thin crust and the crispy edges on the potato!

I looked at a lot of recipes to figure out what to do here, and went to a local Roman pizzeria in Vancouver to try theirs. I mainly followed the instructions in Smitten Kitchen’s recipe, but the Pecorino was my addition. The grocery-store-bought Pecorino wasn’t the best, so I’d say to splash out  on a cheese from a fromagerie/cheese shop if you can. A good substitution would be a nice Parmesan, or you could leave it without any cheese.

I’m leaving some of the amounts kind of vague here. You know how much pepper or rosemary you want on your potato pizza, right? If not, just play with it and see what works best for you!

If you don’t want to make your own pizza dough (although once you’ve tried this one you might find you love that it is easy and tasty) the Whole Foods dough is quite good.

What you need:

• pizza dough (try this no-knead method) 
• 4 teaspoons sea salt
• a few Yukon gold potatoes (I used 2 smallish ones for one pizza)
• 1 small onion, sliced
• freshly cracked black pepper
• olive oil
• fresh rosemary, chopped
• Pecorino cheese

What you do:

1. At least half an hour before assembling the pizza, and up to a few hours before, peel and slice the potatoes. They should be sliced as thinly as possible; if you have a mandoline, this is the perfect time to use it. If not, try to cut the slices thinly and uniformly. Place them in a bowl of water with the salt, and let it sit until you are getting the pizza ready for the oven.
2. Preheat the oven to 260C/500F.
3. Drain the potatoes and use a clean kitchen towel to dry them. Toss the dried potatoes with some olive oil, pepper and rosemary.
4. Pour a bit of olive oil onto a baking pan and spread it around with your fingers.
5. Use your olive oil covered hands to form the crust into the pan, pushing it around until it is a somewhat uniform thickness.
6. Spread the potatoes around the top of the dough, overlapping slightly. If you’re a cheese lover you can sprinkle a bit on now, or wait until it is baked.
7. Bake for 15-25 minutes, depending on the thickness of your crust. The pizza will become crispy and somewhat browned. 
8. Add a sprinkling of cheese before serving. My pizza cutting tool of choice is my clean kitchen scissors, so use those if you have them.
9. Enjoy!