White mushroom pizza with rosemary and blue cheese

Taking pictures of pizza is weirdly hard. About a month ago, Pieter and I actually spent quite a lot of time creating the perfect setting for this beauty, fussing around with different tablecloths and mises-en-place, dragging the kitchen table to the window as the sun rapidly began its descent, and spending about 20 minutes after the pizza had come out of the oven photographing it before we could eat it.

Then I loaded all of the pictures onto my computer, edited them, popped them into a draft… and eventually decided I didn’t like them. The pizza seemed too cutesy, somehow, nestled between a ‘casually’-strewn-about napkin and ornamental rosemary. Pizza isn’t cutesy! Certainly not the way we do it around here, in any case.

And so, martyrs that we are, we set out to start the whole process all over again. A true hardship.
(But seriously – trying to control yourself around a still-bubbling pizza as you attempt to photograph its best angles is a challenge!)

This time the images came out anything but cutesy! I may have overcompensated a bit, but I’m just going to roll with it.

This white mushroom pizza was inspired by a heavenly pizza I had at Pizzeria Libretto on the Danforth in Toronto. Mushrooms, rosemary, blue cheese, and white sauce? Genius. If you’re in Toronto, get on that immediately! Otherwise, whip up this baby at home.

We always make our own dough because the options available at supermarkets here are – in my opinion – unworthy of consumption. If you have good options at your disposal, go for it! Or use a tortilla, pita bread, cauliflower crust… whatever you use, it will be delicious – I promise!

(I’ve included my go-to dough recipe below should you be interested. I don’t want to make any spectacular claims about the recipe, as to be honest I’ve simply never strayed and therefore don’t know any better, but I do think it works very well for thin-crust pizzas!)

I’m providing a recipe for all of this below, but the crux of the matter is this: rosemary, blue cheese, hearty mushrooms, and sharp red onion. Everything else is just detail.

I specifically mention red onion not only because it adds lovely colour, but also because it’s a bit sweeter than yellow onion and it brightens up all of the richness beautifully. It may seem like a take-it-or-leave-it sort of ingredient, but it most certainly is not!

You’ll see that I’ve given really loose amount suggestions for the toppings, and that’s because everyone has different ideals when it comes to pizza! A general guideline: the mozzarella, and not the Gorgonzola, should be your cheese base. Too much Gorgonzola may sound like an impossibility but it can overpower the whole pizza if you’re too heavy-handed with it. Do also make sure that your mushrooms are sliced fairly thinly: this will allow them to release their moisture more quickly in the oven, thereby helping them to brown and reducing the likelihood of a wet pizza.

One final note: as with really any recipe, don’t be afraid to tweak this! For example, if you don’t like Gorgonzola, go for a Roquefort or Danish blue. Don’t have access to fresh rosemary? Don’t worry about it – use dried instead (but do use less of it) and it will be just as delicious.