Italian Naan Pizza

(Video Promo Above)

This is our Twist on an Italian Pizza

It’s a variation of a hummus pizza I make as we use Naan bread for the crust. You can find it in your local grocery store and it comes in plain, garlic, and whole wheat. In this recipe, we use Julie’s famous spaghetti sauce, herbs from our garden, slow roasted Roma tomatoes, toasted pine nuts, and Mozzarella Cheese that I make from scratch. The roasted tomatoes turned out much like the sun-dried ones you buy in a jar with olive oil… but better.

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The first thing you want to do is to cook the Naan bread in the oven for about 5 minutes on each side at 350’F.

Next, take the Naan bread out of the oven and cover it in a layer of your favorite red sauce (spaghetti sauce), now place a layer of oven dried tomatoes on the pizza, then some cheese, in our case we used Gordon’s homemade mozzarella. Cook in the oven for about 8 to 10 min. at 350’F or until the cheese melt and gets slightly brown. Next, add your herbs, roasted pine nuts, a sprinkling of garlic salt, etc. Then you are ready to enjoy!

Oven Dried Roma Tomatoes

(We did use Roma tomatoes for this even though we have vine tomatoes pictured in the photo above. We also added some shaved Parmesan in this version.)

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Oven Dried Roma Tomatoes

We also added our home grown basil leaves and fresh Italian oregano to the jar. Gordon topped the jar off with a nice little sprig of 3 of them and it looks like a flower on top.

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Here are the Recipes for Creating this Delicious Pizza

The first thing you need for this is a lot of Roma tomatoes. I would say I bought about 60 – 70. We find using Roma just makes for a more perfect looking, tasting and textured tomato. A perfect thickness, all you have to do is slice them in half and place them onto a cookie sheet. But first, put down some parchment paper.

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You want to wash them and then slice them in half.

After Two Hours of Baking

We baked them on 300’F for two hours and achieved this result. Which was great and we did set aside a few of them for our Naan bread pizzas. Then, we put the rest back into the oven so they could dry out a bit more.

Below is after 3 1/2 hrs. total cooking time.

So chewy and caramelized!

Perfect!

Next, you just want to store your oven roasted tomatoes into a jar, adding layers of basil, garlic, and even some of our oregano or other fresh herbs, while covering in extra virgin olive oil.

Makes for an excellent gift!

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Buon Appetito!

Between the 60 – 70 Romas I bought and the Naan bread pizzas we ate, they all fit into these two jars. They do shrink down so consider this when you make them.

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Delizioso!

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Gordon’s Homemade Mozzarella in Olive Oil

(Do NOT be afraid to try this yourself. It’s really not that hard.)

Homemade Mozzarella

In the photo above Gordon stored his mozzarella in the water he used to make the cheese, on left, and in the other jar he added herbs and covered everything in extra virgin olive oil. Either way is perfect!

Make Your Own Mozzarella Cheese

This also makes an excellent gift when put into pretty clear jars for any occasion.

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Getting Started

This was actually pretty easy and exciting to make. It was a lot of fun on a very rainy day to spend it in the kitchen.

The Ingredients

1 Gallon Milk

1/2 Rennet Tablet

2 Tbsp Citric Acid

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup water

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Marinade

Fresh Basil and Garlic to taste

3 cups Olive Oil

1 Tbsp Red Peppercorns

Fresh Basil

Heating water on the stove to dip the cheese into or you can use the microwave. Be sure to use raw unpasteurized milk if you can get it, otherwise use whole milk.

Pour milk into large pot. Place cooking thermometer into pot.

Using two containers dissolve the rennet in ~1/4 cup water in one container and in a different container dissolve the citric acid in the same amount of water.

Add the dissolved citric acid into the milk and stir well.

Heat the milk to 88’F and the milk will start to look chunky. Now, add the dissolved rennet into the milk mixture and stir well. Heat the mixture to 105’F, turn off the heat, cover, and let the mixture sit for 20 min.

Pour the cheese into a colander with a larger bowl underneath to catch the whey.

Viola! Your mozzarella cheese is almost done!

Here you have two options… you can place the cheese in the microwave for 1 min., add your salt to taste and then start to kneed it like you would dough. As you kneed the cheese you will see it combine and look more like Mozzarella cheese.

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You can also place the cheese into the hot water and it will heat the cheese like the microwave does and then kneed the cheese as before.

You can also pull it long forcing it through your hand into a ball. You may need to place the cheese back into the microwave or hot water to make the cheese more pliable while handling it.

Form Into Balls

Chopped basil, garlic and red peppercorns.

Heating olive oil on the stove and sauteing the garlic.

Crushing Whole Peppercorns

Just place the peppercorns on a cutting board and use the bottom of a small bowl or jar to crush them. Or any surface that you prefer.

The Base of the Mozzarella Marinade

Adding Your Cheese Balls

Now pour over the mozzarella balls and marinade ingredients, the olive oil.

Himalayan Crystal Salt

You can use any salt you like. We like using exotic salts, because they add a different flavor to our dishes. This particular salt has a very light flavor. Not to mention quite pretty to look at.