Tower of Pizza

Fette di Pizza con la Zucca, Pancetta, Pomodorini e Rosmarino

Pizza Slices with Pumpkin, Bacon, Tomato & Rosemary

So much fun these little slices of crispy, crunchy, moist and yummy, baked-in-the-pan pizzas here! And as always, quick, easy and delicious- which is just the way food needs to be after a long day at work!

As usual, I wanted to try out something different for my topping and sure enough, there was the last quarter of my little Hokkaido pumpkin left over from the other night. That, together with crispy bacon, red and yellow cocktail tomatoes, fresh rosemary and basil and dried Italian herbs... well, how could I go wrong? Or you either? ;-)

To make these, I cut my dough into rectangles of roughly 4x6" and "baked" them on on my grill pan, on the stove top, on the highest setting, for 2-3 minutes from either side, until they were lightly scorched from the grill marking, but still slightly raw and soft in the middle. That is the perfect point to fetch them out of the pan and do the next slices... they will finish baking properly in the oven soon enough!

Once the bases are done, add the bacon to the hot pan and allow it to brown also for 2-3 minutes on each side, but not get too dark- the bacon also will finish baking in the oven of course and you don't want it to burn!

Now that the pan has a nice coat of fat from the bacon, add the pumpkin slices. I used a potato peeler to slice mine thinly and found it was the easiest and best way to shave thin slices off. I fried them for 1-2 minutes, just long enough for the pumpkin to cook and become soft.

So now I had all of the cooked ingredients ready and could get on with assembling my little pizza slices. First of all I sprinkled the pizza bases with a little crumbled mozzarella, as this would melt very easily and make all of the other toppings stick and stay in place. I then added the slices of cherry tomato, bacon, pumpkin, a few basil leaves and a sprinkle of dried oregano, along with the occasional fresh leaf of basil. I made sure to place a tomato or a slice of pumpkin on top of the basil to prevent it from burning. Last but not least I added a little grated Grana cheese and popped them into the oven for 5 minutes at the highest setting.

One final minute under the broiler will give the dough a lovely, crisp golden finish and all that you need to do now is to add plenty of fresh rosemary (if we had added it earlier it would have burned and become brittle and bitter)- but this way it is aromatic and delicious and much, much prettier!

And if you ask me these make a wonderful evening snack! Although I would recommend you don't ask me, but rather simply go ahead and try them for yourself! You're going to love 'em!