Rosemary Pizza

I really, really wanted to call this Rosemary Flatbread, but after some in-depth research on Wikipedia I learned that this is actually pizza. According to the almighty Wikipedia, flatbread is unleavened bread (made without yeast or other leavening agent), and you had better believe that there was yeast in my dough. I did find a few sources that say pizza actually is flatbread, but I am going to stand by Wikipedia on this one. I guess I need to make flatbread one of these days to satisfy my need to label something as such.

You might be wondering what the big deal is with calling it pizza or flatbread, and boy do I have a few things to tell you.

1. Mind your own beeswax.

2. Remember the part in The Life Aquatic when Steve and Ned are wandering around the ship arguing and end up on the deck punching each other? Ned says, "I can't believe I asked if I could call you dad. Of course you said no," and Steve responds, "I let you call me Stevesy. It sounds better." That's exactly how I feel about this. I really want to call it flatbread, but Wikipedia will only let me call it pizza.

3. Go to bed, you sons of bitches. Just kidding! That's a Steve Zissou line that always makes me laugh, and I heard it again today when checking my quotes for accuracy. I don't really want you to go to bed. I want you to keep reading.

Rosemary Pizza

Pizza dough

Cheese, grated or crumbled

Rosemary (preferably fresh, but dried should also work)

Olive oil

Sea salt

Garlic in some form (optional)

Freshly cracked pepper (optional)

Preheat your oven and pizza stone to 400-450. I usually stick to 400 because I have a fire alarm that has adverse reactions to oven temperatures over 400, and some days I just don't feel like setting myself up for the stress of flinging all my windows open, turning a fan on high and frantically waving a towel in front of my fire alarm. If I did not have such issues to deal with I would turn the oven up as hot as I could get it.

I used the remaining dough from my recent bread making for the crust. I was planning on using some Trader Joe's pre-made pizza dough that I bought a while back, but there was some ominous liquid that had developed in the bag. Kind of weirded me out. If your dough is in the refrigerator, let it sit at room temperature for at least 20 minutes before working with it.

I recently discovered that rolling dough out on a silicone baking mat is super easy.

You just flip it over onto a pizza peel dusted with cornmeal and slowly peel it off the mat. If you don't have a mat just stretch or roll out the dough however you normally would.

Drizzle the dough with a little olive oil, and rub it over the entire top of the crust. If you go overboard with the oil just blot some off with a paper towel.

Cover the dough with grated cheese and a few sprigs of rosemary that has been torn into little pieces. Sprinkle with a little sea salt. Add cracked pepper if you wish. As far as garlic goes, I meant to rub a clove of garlic over the raw dough, but I completely forgot. My back up plan was sprinkling on a little garlic salt when it came out of the oven, but next time I will either rub the crust with garlic or infuse the olive oil with a little garlic.

As far as cheese goes, you can use just about anything. The first time I made this was during our Italian dinner party when I was stressing out about not having enough food. I happened to have fresh rosemary and monterey jack in the fridge, so I threw them onto some pizza dough and everyone loved it. This time around I used mozzarella, and that worked as well. Be creative.

Bake until the cheese is melted and the crust is done to your liking.

Yum.