Spicy Sausage and Honey Pizza

Hi Everyone! Today is my first post and I am SO excited! A little about me: I am food obsessed and LOVE entertaining. I truly believe that food brings people together in a very special way. You can learn so much about someone just by sitting down and enjoying a meal. My intention is to provide you guys with great recipes to entertain with on a weekly basis. Each week I will post 3 recipes that create an awesome meal as the center piece of your gathering. These recipes are meant to enjoy with the people you love or the people you are just getting to know. I believe that entertaining should be easy and fun, you don’t need a special occasion to bring people together. So, let’s get into it!

Let’s talk pizza. I LOVE pizza. I most definitely eat it weekly and am a non-bias pizza lover. It is also my go to hosting entree. Why? Because who doesn’t love pizza? You can cater it to anyones dietary restrictions and preferences. You can do a build your own pizza party or just do a couple larger pizzas, throw in a salad and cocktail and you have yourself a party.

The reason I love this pizza is it’s a perfect blend of hearty, spicy and sweet. Its Neapolitan style crust is thin, chewy and crispy - it’s perfection.

Recipe

Important: Preheat oven and pizza stone for 1 hour at 500" degrees. You want that stone HOT! If you don’t have a pizza stone preheat a baking sheet for 20 minutes at 500 degrees.

Ingredients:

2 balls of store bought or homemade pizza dough

1 pound of spicy Italian sausage

2 28oz cans of San Marzano tomatoes

1 pound of low moisture fresh mozzarella

6 TBSP honey (plain or spicy)

4 TBSP fresh basil, chopped

1 TBSP Olive Oil

To make the pizza:

Add 1 tablespoon to a fry pan and add the Italian sausage. Cook fully. While the sausage is cooking drain the tomatoes. This is more of a margarita style pizza, so you really just want all the tomato and none of the juice.

You also want the tomatoes crushed so you can squeeze the juice out of the tomatoes while crushing them. You can also use fresh Roma tomatoes. I love San Marzano tomatoes, however, they can be difficult to find fresh.

Next tear or chop the fresh mozzarella. Then chop the basil.

To assemble the pizza: Add a good amount of cornmeal to the pizza peel so the dough does not stick. 1/2 cup should be enough. Pull the pizza dough to the desired size and thickness, then put on top of the cornmeal.

Next, spread the crushed tomatoes on top of the dough, add 1/2 of the chopped basil, layer with cooked sausage, mozzarella, and drizzle with honey. You want to slide the pizza off of the peel and onto the stone that is in the oven. If you have enough cornmeal it should slide off easily.

This pizza only takes about 6-8 minutes to cook. Keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn. As soon as the cheese is bubbling and crust golden, the pizza is ready. Use the same pizza peel to take the pizza off the stone and out of the oven. A little tip, put tin foil on the rack below the stone so you don’t make a mess of your oven with the cornmeal.

Let the pizza cool for 5 minutes and drizzle with more honey. Cut, serve, and ENJOY!