Caprese Pizza

Insalata Caprese (Salad as made on the Italian island of Capri) is a wonderful combination of ripe tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese and fresh basil that simply can’t be beat.

Since I love to be creative on our Date Nights I recently decided to make a Caprese Pizza. My experiment is your gain because it turned out to be every bit as delicious as I imagined it would be!

Since I try to make Date Night recipes simple I use store bought pizza dough. It is so much easier than making your own and it is so much better than the premade pizza crusts.

  • 1 one pound pizza dough
  • 2 large ripe tomatoes
  • 1 large bunch of fresh basil
  • 12 ounces fresh mozzarella
  • olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
  • kosher salt
  • fresh cracked black pepper

Slice the mozzarella cheese. Thinly slice tomatoes, sprinkle them with salt and pepper and set them on paper towels to drain for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. This high temperature closely resemble an authentic pizza oven.

Wash the basil and break off the leaves from the stem keeping the leaves whole. Lightly coat the basil with olive oil to keep it moist while baking.

Roll pizza dough onto 16-inch perforated pizza pan. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with crushed red pepper.

Arrange the tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and basil on the dough in overlapping concentric circles.

Bake at 500 degrees. Check at 10 minutes and continue baking until the crust is to your liking. Lightly drizzle the cooked pizza with olive oil.

Let the pizza rest for five minutes before slicing..

Bruce Cadle AKA The Date Night Chef, and his wife Valerie are the authors of Party For Two – Fun, Fancy, but Easy Romantic Recipes from The Date Night Chef. Available at DateNightChef.com.