Vegetarian
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[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

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About This Recipe

Yield: Makes 3 pies, serving 4 to 6
Active time: 15 minutes (plus time to make dough and sauce, if using homemade)
Total time: 3 hours
Special equipment: Baking steel or stone
This recipe appears in: Top This: Why Don't We Put More Broccoli On Pizza?

Ingredients

  • 1 small head broccoli, cut into 1/2-inch florets (about 3 cups florets total)
  • 1 small red onion, thinly sliced
  • 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • Extra-virgin olive oil
  • Kosher salt
  • 1 recipe pizza sauce, such as our New York Style Pizza Sauce
  • 1 recipe New York Style Pizza Dough, divided into three balls, or three 12-ounce balls store-bought pizza dough
  • 1 pound grated full-fat dry mozzarella cheese (about 4 cups), very cold

Procedures

  1. Toss broccoli, onion, pepper flakes, and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large bowl. Season with salt to taste. Set aside.

  2. At least two hours before baking, remove dough from refrigerator and shape into balls by gathering dough towards bottom and pinching shut. Flour well and place each one in a separate medium mixing bowl. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and allow to rise at warm room temperature until roughly doubled in volume.

  3. 1 hour before baking, adjust oven rack with pizza steel to top position and preheat oven to 550°F. When ready to bake, turn single dough ball out onto lightly flour surface. Gently press out dough into rough 8-inch circle, leaving outer 1-inch higher than the rest. Gently stretch dough by draping over knuckles into a 12 to 14-inch circle about 1/4-inch thick. Transfer to pizza peel.

  4. Spread approximately 2/3 cup of sauce evenly over surface of crust, leaving 1/2 to 1-inch border along edge. Evenly spread 1/3 of cheese over sauce. Spread 1/3 of broccoli and onion mixture over surface of pizza. Switch oven to broiler, then slide pizza onto baking stone and bake until crust is golden brown and puffed, and broccoli is charred in spots, 4 to 8 minutes. Transfer to cutting board, slice, and serve immediately. Repeat with remaining two dough balls, remaining sauce, and remaining cheese, reheating baking steel in between pies as necessary.