You’ll love this pizza with slices of garlic caramelized in butter. Make extra caramelized butter so you can save the leftovers and add it as a salad topping.
This garlic recipe is the way to a garlic lover’s heart. While pizza is always tasty, this recipe takes it to a different level. Sliced garlic is slowly caramelized in butter, which brings out the complex flavors in garlic.
Insert pizza pun
What kind of garlic to use
If you have access to hardneck garlic, this is a terrific recipe to showcase your gourmet garlic because you’ll be able to taste it front and center.
If you can’t buy hardneck garlic, never fear. You can use conventional garlic sold at the grocery store and still get a great result.
If you’re super busy and worried about the time required to peel so many garlic cloves, use peeled garlic or one of these garlic substitutes. While garlic substitutes aren’t quite as tasty as fresh cloves, you’ll still end up with a terrific result.
Plus, you can even use garlic powder. Just follow the process in this garlic bread recipe to learn how to make garlic butter using garlic powder.
Why this recipe works
There are copious amounts of garlic in this garlic pizza recipe. Garlic shows up in the garlic pizza sauce and as pizza toppings.
Because the garlic is slowly cooked both in the garlic pizza sauce and in butter, the garlic brings a sweet taste, instead of the pungent punch you would taste if you ate the garlic raw.
This recipe wonât give you bad breath. But it will make your mouth water as you wait impatiently for the pizza to come out of the oven.
Tips for success
- If you’re making pizza with store-bought pizza dough, here are tips for how to improve the pizza crust and avoid disappointing soggy pizza.
- Make sure you season the garlic butter enough, especially if you’re using unsalted butter. Seasoning the garlic butter is key to a delicious garlic topping on your pizza.
- If you’re baking at high altitude, you’re probably OK without modifying the recipe. But just in case, you might want to check out these tips on high altitude baking to avoid failure. Make sure you don’t over cook the pizza to avoid drying it out.
Caramelized Garlic Pizza with Fresh Basil
Equipment
- Chopping Board
- Knife
- Rolling Pin
- Pizza Stone
Ingredients
Pizza Foundation
- 2 balls (2 balls) Pizza Dough
- 2 cup (490 g) Garlic Pizza Sauce, See our recipe for Garlic Pizza Sauce.
- 2 large sheets (2 large sheets) Parchment Paper
Pizza Toppings
- 16 oz. (453.59 g) Mozzarella, Grated
- 8 oz. (226.8 g) Parmigiano-Reggiano, Grated
- 1 sprig (1 sprig) Basil, Approximately 6 inches (15 cm), about a handful of basil leaves.
Fried Garlic
- 3 tablespoon (44.36 g) butter, Salted
- 3 heads (3 heads) garlic
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 500ÂșF (260ÂșC).
- Collect all the ingredients.
Prepare The Garlic
- Peel the garlic cloves. Slice every clove thinly.
- Heat the butter in a frypan over medium heat. Add the sliced garlic. Turn the heat down to medium-low. Allow the garlic to fry in the butter for 10 minutes. The garlic should be golden brown. If it looks dark brown, turn the heat down to low to avoid burning the garlic.
Prepare The Pizza
- While waiting for the garlic to cook, roll out the pizza dough. Use a clean surface and dust lightly with flour.
- Move the rolled-out pizza dough on a sheet of parchment paper. Use your fingers to stretch out if you want the pizza to be thinner.
- Smear the garlic pizza sauce over the pizza dough.
- Evenly sprinkle half of the grated mozzarella cheese.
- Add half of the grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.
- Add the fried garlic slices on top of the cheese. Distribute half of the fried garlic evenly across the pizza.
- Bake the pizza in the preheated oven for 20 minutes.
- Keep an eye on the pizza to ensure the crust doesnât burn. If the edge of the crust turns dark brown, like it is on the verge of burning, turn the oven down to 450ÂșF (232ÂșC). Repeat steps 1-6 for the second ball of pizza dough to make another garlic pizza with the remaining ingredients.
- While the pizza is baking, thinly slice the basil. Stack the leaves together and roll into a cigar shape. Very thinly slice the basil. Garnish the pizza with the basil and cut into slices.
- Enjoy the garlic pizza!
Notes
- We didnât include a recipe for pizza dough because there are so many great pizza dough recipes out there. The particular recipe we used has these ingredients:
- 4 cups flour
- 1 envelope yeast
- 2 teaspoon salt
- 1.5 cups water (110ÂșF water)
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- This recipe already contains plenty of salt from the garlic pizza sauce, salted butter, mozzarella, and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Feel free to season with extra salt and pepper to taste.
Nutrition
Can you make this in advance?
Yes, while pizzas taste great fresh out of the oven, pizza is still delicious the next day. You can make this pizza ahead of time and enjoy it within 3 days. You can also freeze this pizza to eat later.
How to store and reheat leftovers
After the pizza has cooled, cover the pizza and store it in the fridge. You can reheat the leftovers in the microwave, pan fry it, or reheat in the oven. If you donât have a microwave, my next favorite way to reheat pizza is to pan fry in a nonstick pan.
If you’re reheating pizza, you’ll want to bake it in a preheated oven at 500Âș F/260Âș C for about 10 minutes or until the crust is warmed and the toppings are hot.