Very Vicky: Veggie Flatbread Pizza

By Vicky Nardone

One of Matt and my favorite lunch spots to go on Saturday's is the local olive oil place, D'Avolios because they make their own delicious Roman style pizza that you can customize with your favorite toppings, meat and sauce. Of course whenever we find something we really like, we immediately start thinking of how to reproduce it ourselves. So below is our recipe for how to reproduce this pizza.

Dough Ingredients (makes enough for two pizzas)

1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
3 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flur
3/4 cup cool water
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons salt

Topping Ingredients

Carton of tomatoes
8oz mozzarella cheese
Can of artichoke hearts
Can of black olives
Package of smoked salmon (optional)

Recipe
Make a sponge by sprinkling the yeast over the warm water. Add the flour and stir to combine. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

Add the remaining 3 1/4 cups flour and the cool water, olive oil and salt to the sponge. If you have a stand mixer, put the dough hook on and mix the dough until the dough is no longer sticky. If you don't have a stand mixer, start mixing with a spoon and then switch to your hands with the dough gets to thick to mix with the spoon.

Shape the dough into a ball. Add some olive oil to the bowl and roll the dough ball around in the oil to coat it. Cover the bowl and leave the dough to rise in a warm place for about an hour. It should be doubled in size when you're done.

Dump the dough out onto a floured work surface, punch it down and divide in half and shape into two balls. Wrap the two balls in plastic wrap and stick them in the fridge for half an hour. I usually make one pizza and save the other ball for use later in the week.

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees. Remove the dough from the fridge and roll out on a floured work surface into your desired shape. Pinch around the edges to form the crust.

Spread a thin level of olive oil on top of the crust. I'm using our favorite D'Avolios garlic olive oil and I used a basting brush to spread the oil.

Cut up all of the ingredients for the toppings. I didn't use smoked salmon this time but I usually put it on half because Matt loves it. I didn't need to cut up the black olives because we bought the sliced kind.