The theme for this month’s Bread Baking Day which is hosted by Zorra at  1 x umrühren bitte aka kochtopf is Pizza Party.

I started making my own pizzas when I decided to go vegan two years ago. I couldn’t and still can’t find any vegan pizzas here in Dresden and seriously, who wants to scrape off the cheese?  Speaking about cheese: of course my first thought was that a pizza without cheese wasn’t a pizza anymore. To me the cheese topping provided most of the pizza flavour and I also loved the texture it provided.

Fresh Herb Pizza

Now  I am glad that I started to make pizzas without cheese. And I like my cheeseless versions much better than the cheesy ones. I prefer them because I changed my focus from (cheese)topping to crust. And I found the perfect crust recipe. It is made with the delayed fermentation method, which means you prepare the dough one day in advance, add as little yeast as possible, and let the dough rise in the fridge over night.That way it will develop a great flavour and texture. If you use this dough recipe for your crust, the flavour explosion will transport you right to your favourite Italian restaurant (or maybe even to Italy?), enjoying the perfect pizza.

The perfect crust recipe can be found in the book The Bread Baker’s Apprentice or at 101 cookbooks. It takes some preparation time, but not much actual working and cooking time. Once your dough is prepared, you can just stretch or roll it out thinly and top it with your favourite toppings. If you can heat your oven up to 500 °C,  your pizza will be ready after five minutes baking time.

We enjoyed ours with lots of fresh herbs. I added finely sliced fresh sage to the dough, made a tomato sauce with olive oil, garlic, fresh sage and oregano, topped the pizza with aromatic tomatoes and added some arugula and fresh basil after it was cooked. Great on a warm summer’s evening with some red wine or your favourite non-alcoholic drink.