My dearest friends and readers, I have missed you. It seems like an eternity since I’ve been on my computer, on WordPress, typing away. First of all, I’d like to thank all those wonderful friends who have left comments on my Facebook, have chatted with me and sent me emails. I so, so, appreciate your love and thoughtfulness.

It has been a busy summer for me. I celebrated the end of Ramadan in Houston because I really needed to see my family and to feel the comfort, love and support only family and close friends can bring. It was a bit of a sad Ramadan for me and I really wanted to trade my tears for smiles again. If you know me, you’ll know that I’m never without a smile on my face. My thought on this matter is that I just don’t have time to be in a bad mood. It takes entirely too much energy to be grumpy.

We had a wonderful mini vacation to Houston, San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth. It was exhilarating to be with family again and laugh too much, eat too much and sleep not enough! I came back energised and ready to get cooking, baking, photographing and blogging.

At least that was the plan. Ever since I’ve been back, happy busyness has been keeping me otherwise occupied. The end of the summer events have been keeping me busy as far as cooking goes, I had a few dinner parties that went fabulously and I’ve also been working every Saturday as the Thermador cooking demo person. 

In all this busyness though, I have missed one thing, my blogging friends, my lovely readers and I’ve missed the friendship that only a blogger knows. It was time to come back.

I, honestly, still don’t have time to cook and my family has been sorely neglected. I may be on the brink of a mutiny. But I manage to get food on the table; whether it is edible or not! 

Since I cook every week on Saturdays for Thermador, I am going to start featuring those recipes until I can find a break to do my own blog cooking. I will tell you now, to excuse the bad photos because of the lighting in the showroom. 

So, onto this Heirloom Tomato Pizza; it was supposed to be a tart. When I was heading off to the showroom for the demo, I left the tart shells in my freezer. Yep, big fail. However, I was also making a BBQ Chicken Pizza that day and had two rounds of pizza dough. I figured that a pizza was just as good as a tart, and you know what? It was pretty darn delicious.

Save Print

Heirloom Tomato Pizza

Prep time:  1 hour 30 mins

Cook time:  25 mins

Serves: 18-24 slices

A creamy, ricotta and mascarpone cheese pizza topped with seasonal heirloom tomatoes.

Ingredients

Pizza Dough

• 3½ cups/500g all purpose/plain flour
• 2¼ teaspoon/1 sachet instant yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1-1½ cups warm water

Pizza

• 1 15oz/425g container ricotta cheese
• 1 8oz/225g container mascarpone cheese
• 2 teaspoons salt or to taste
• ⅚ sprigs fresh thyme
• pepper
• 4-5 large assorted Heirloom Tomatoes, sliced
• extra thyme for springing over top

Instructions

Pizza Dough

1. There are many ways to make pizza dough.
2. I usually dump all my dry ingredients into the mixer and mix,
3. Add the warm water, 1 cup first and then drizzle as necessary.
4. Let the mixer do the work, knead and become nice and smooth.
5. Place the dough ball in a greased bowl abc cover with a towel to rise.
6. About an hour at sea level but about 30-40 minutes at altitude.
7. However, when I do this, I know my yeast is fresh and will rise.
8. If you are unsure of the quality of your yeast, then let it proof with the water and sugar until light and fluffy.
9. Then add to the flour, olive oil and salt.
10. While the dough is rising, work on the tomatoes and the cheese mixture.
11. Slice the tomatoes in a ¼ inch slice.
12. Mix the ricotta and mascarpone together, add the thyme, salt and pepper.
13. Be generous with the salt, but taste to ensure you don't over salt!
14. Preheat the oven to 500F/250C
15. Once the dough has risen, spread out the dough into a large sheet pan, I used a half sheet size.
16. You could also divide the dough into ¾ pieces and make individual pizzas.
17. Smear the cheese filling all over the dough and arrange the tomatoes over the top.
18. Sprinkle a few thyme leaves but reserve some to place on top after baking.
19. Place in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes.
20. The tomatoes should be shrunk slightly and the crust and cheese lightly browned.
21. Pull out of the oven and let cool a little before slicing.

Notes

So, this was the first time I made this and though I usually like to try it out a couple of times before posting, I thought it was very good like this. I chose to use ricotta and mascarpone because I don't like the graininess of ricotta cheese. I figured, mixing a bit of mascarpone would tame the gritty feeling and sure enough, I got all creamy and not grainy. Creamy is good and this was really very good with the tomatoes being the star. However, I think a tad drizzle of garlic oil or even basil oil could elevate this even more. Maybe even an addition of a garlic clove in the cheese mixture could zip it up a bit. But like I said, it is very, very good as is. I just have a tendency to not leave things well enough alone.

Wordpress Recipe Plugin by EasyRecipe

3.5.3226

I hope y’all have had a chance to try some heirloom tomatoes this season. They are so pretty and quite delicious. 

Now, I’m dreading the impending…..pumpkin season. You know me and pumpkins. I guess we’ll see what I can muster up this pumpkin season to be a reputable blogger 🙂

I wish you all a very happy and productive week. I shall be by to visit you all very soon. Thank you for your patience, love and support!