The Sweet Potato Fennel Pizza

Last night, in a fit of enthusiasm about going back to school after a week's vacation (?), I went to Whole Foods and spent the equivalent of a down payment on a one bedroom condo in Cambridge in order to have lunches to eat for the week.  I decided to recreate a pizza that I had made with my mother a few months ago.  The pizza mom and I made had roasted butternut squash and I think arugula and feta.  WF didn't have any pre-cut squash and I was feeling lazy, so I decided to use sweet potatoes instead.  Then the fennel caught my eye and since every issue of Bon Appetit I've gotten in the past five months has had fennel recipes in it, I thought I'd give it a try.

I am now going to explain how I created my pizza by using other people's pictures from the internet, since I didn't take any of my own...

First, I peeled and cubed two sweet potatoes and tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Then I roasted them at 400 with a sliced half an onion for about 10 minutes.  Since they were going back in the oven, I wanted them only slightly soft.

When they came out I scraped them into a bowl and used the same cookie sheet to roast sliced fennel, also tossed in olive oil and salt for about 10 minutes.

In the meantime I sauteed a bunch of sliced crimini mushroms and onion in olive oil and butter (I had at this point run out of olive oil)

I purchased prepared pizza dough from Whole Foods (the white flour kind, I'm a peasant) and split it into three individual-sized pizzas.

I put each of the three toppings (potatoes, mushrooms and fennel) on the dough, and topped it with:

pepper goat cheese

fresh mozzarella

gruyere

fresh basil







Then I tossed it in the oven at 400 for about 15-20 minutes until the dough was all golden delicious.

In retrospect:

• If I had had more olive oil, I would have brushed the dough first it was a little dry. 
• The cheese was good, but not enough of a binder so all the ingredients fall off a little when taking bites.  Answer: needs more cheese.
• Since all the ingredients were cooked before going on the pizza, I should really have pre-baked the dough for at least 5-10 minutes before tossing everything on top.  That would have made the dough more solid in the middle and kept the cheese and basil from getting too cooked.

Regardless, it was all really good and I am going to be eating it for the next 4 days.

My pizza doesn't look like any of the sweet potato pizzas online, so I'll take a picure at some point and get it up here.