Sausage and Caramelized Onion Pizza Recipe

I’m Alex Guarnaschelli, and today it’s homemade pizza at the loft. For me pizza is its
own food group. First, it’s cooked crispy in a skillet topped with sausage and caramelized
onions and popped in the oven to finish.

Let’s just all get a little bit of vegetable oil in our skillets. We have our dough and now
we’re just going to cut off any excess flour, you can attend for a minute in your own
pizzeria and give it a little flip but don’t get out of hand. Now, in we go, are you guys
ready? I’d kind of like to do this, all three of us together. Alright, we’re going to come
over to our skillets. Notice the cast iron to get a nice crispy crust. I love that cast iron.
And just gently drop in the dough. I love this for pizza because it’s so easy. And these
onions really look nice and golden caramelized, they’ve soaked up all that delicious
grease from cooking the sausage so I’m going to just get rid of these onions and put them
on a plate. Look at that, that’s really the foundation of this pizza.

And I have to tell you this moment brings to mind my childhood like you wouldn’t
believe. When you walk outside the door of my apartment building was a doughnut shop.
I mean it was like an intoxicating scent teasing you as you walk in the lobby, eat
doughnuts. Next store to that was a pizzeria. And so I’d be like, okay, I made a pasta
doughnut shop, I’m good to go and then, oops I would trip and fall flat on my face with
the smell of pizza. And that’s what I want to get here today.

Now, when you see a little bit of brown on the edges you’re going to want to just slide
your tongs underneath, right? And flip the pizza over and they’ll kind of puff up again.
So I’m going to just put a touch of salt and pepper right on the dough, a little bit of white
pepper and a little bit of salt, little kosher salt, very low key, you won’t even know it’s
there. And now we are ready. Start topping it with those onions because that’s sort of our
foundation. Spread those onions around, leave a little bit, a little blank spot here and there
where too much cheese happens to fall in a crack.

Okay, so mozzarella, oh, my god poetically cut. There’s barely enough. I might not have
enough for myself. You might want to shut your heat off underneath your pizza, pass the
parmesan please, I can’t live without it. Now, like I said you have this gooey mozzarella.
That’s the go and then you have a little bit of parmesan cheese. It’s kind of brings all
together and it gives it a nice saltiness. And now that we have that cheese foundation, you
can just top those bits of sausage right in there because these are going to go into a 350-
degree oven for about five to eight minutes. Remember the dough’s almost cooked. All
we’re doing here is making sure that cheese has melted and gooey on top. So in the oven
we go.

Hello pizzas, this is always the best part, the pay off. Look at these pizzas. Can you
believe it? The cheese— Oh my god, what a reception, what an audience we have here.
Just the last grating of parmesan cheese. I really don’t like to cook herbs that are as
delicate as basil in the pizza, you can. If the leaves are bigger, tear them a little bit so you
get more of that aromatic basil flavor and then just a tiny drizzle. I don’t like to go
overboard and I could see that if I don’t give these pizzas out soon, I think things are
going to get ugly over here.

Alright, dig in.