Recipe & words: Gretchen Lowe
Styling: Amber Armitage
Photography: Manja Wachsmuth
Featured: Homestyle Magazine
The classic combination of pears, walnuts and blue cheese isn’t just for salad. Toss the same ingredients onto pizza dough and make your own gourmet flatbread at home. You can make individual serves or two large pizzas. Any type of ripe, firm pear will work well.
Serves 6
Flatbread dough
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 tsp dried yeast
Pinch of caster sugar
600g plain flour
1 tsp salt
60ml olive oil, plus extra for brushing
Topping
Drizzle olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
50g mozzarella, grated
2 bosc pears, thinly sliced
75g blue cheese, crumbled
70g walnuts, chopped
Handful spinach
Drizzle olive oil
Juice of half a lemon
Freshly ground salt and pepper
For the flatbread base combine water, yeast and sugar in a small bowl. Set aside for 5 minutes or until foamy. Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the yeast mixture and olive oil. Use a butter knife in a cutting motion to mix until the mixture is combined. Use your hands to bring the dough together in the bowl.
Brush a bowl lightly with oil. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Place in the prepared bowl and turn to coat in oil. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place to rise for 30 minutes or until dough doubles in size.
Preheat oven to 240C. Place a pizza stone or baking tray on the centre rack of the oven. Lay a piece of baking paper on the bench and on top, stretch out dough to desired thickness. Brush the dough with olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic. Top with mozzarella cheese, pear slices, half the blue cheese and half the walnuts then transfer to pizza stone and cook for 10 minutes or until edges are golden brown.
Remove from oven and sprinkle the remaining chopped walnuts and crumbled blue cheese. Top with a mound of rocket, olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper and serve warm.
A wonderful recipe from my days at Homestyle. Thanks to the talented Manja Wachsmuth for her photography and Amber Armitage for help with food styling. x
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