Butternut Squash Pizza with Goat Cheese & Fig and Cherry Jam

Goat cheese and my fig and cherry jam pair nicely with this butternut squash pizza. With bold flavors predominate in this pizza, this is a perfect dinner to impress any company!

In a previous post, I gave you all of my tips on how to make amazing pizza at home. Now I get to show you how I put these tips to work in my own kitchen with this pizza. This pizza with butternut squash and fig & cherry jam is one for the books!

Did you know that it doesn’t take too much time at all, really, to make your own pizza at home? Seriously! You can make an amazing pizza from scratch in under an hour. I’m providing you with the full recipe of the pizza I made but the dough is suitable for any pizza you choose to make.

One of the things that you can do that will save you some serious time is to continue to work as the pizza dough is resting and rising. Yep, never stop moving! During the 30 minutes it took for my dough to rise, I did all of the prep work (cut veggies, mixed ricotta, minced garlic) to make this pizza as fast as I could. I have a really bad habit of cooking right when I’m starving so I usually look for the fastest way to make something. I also preheated my oven while my dough was resting. If you are using a pizza stone, this is a must!

I used to work at this place that had an amazing and huge wood fire oven that we would cook flatbreads and all kinds of stuff in (like a Ciopinno, a baked meatball dish,  some roasted veggies). It was a big beast and such a fun one to work! One of the things I remember doing to make out flatbreads especially delicious and I apply it to all of my homemade pizzas is minced garlic in olive oil. We would take a teaspoon of some oil and a little bit of garlic and spread it all around the bottom of the flatbread and it was enough to add that little extra amount of love to the dish. Fantastic.

Be sure to have enough cornmeal on the bottom of whatever tool you’re using to transfer your unbaked pizza into your oven (if using a stone or some other intense hear source) otherwise it will stick and all of your toppings will fly off onto the bottom of your oven. That is incredibly frustrating.

I had some leftover jam from my baked brie that I needed to use up and this pizza worked marvelously! I was actually really impressed with myself at how well all of the flavors of this pizza really came together (that can be hard to do some days). I really hope that you enjoy this pizza; have some friends over; make this for date night. Have fun with it!

Are there any specialty pizzas you’d like to see featured on the blog? Drop a comment down below and I’ll make it up for ya!

Happy eating everyone

!

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Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese Pizza

Prep Time

15 mins

Cook Time

10 mins

Total Time

55 mins

 

Course: Main Dish

Cuisine: American

Servings: 2 people

Author: ijustmakesandwiches

Ingredients

Pizza Dough

• 1/2 tablespoon yeast
• 4 ounces water
• 7 ounces bread flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 ounce oil
• 1 tablespoon honey

Toppings

• 1/2 each butternut squash cut 1/4" thin
• 1/2 cup ricotta
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• 3 cloves garlic minced
• 2 tablespoons EVOO
• 1/4 cup fig and cherry jam
• 2 tablespoons goat cheese
• 1 tablespoon mint leaves or parsley leaves garnish

Instructions

1. Let yeast and warm water bloom together in a mixing bowl for 5 minutes.

2. Mix dry ingredients together, in a mixing bowl, making sure that salt is evenly distributed throughout the flour. Mix oil and honey together. Add oil and honey to the yeast first, followed by the dry ingredients and begin mixing with a dough hook.

   
3. Once all of the ingredients come together in a ball, speed up the mixer and mix for 5-7 minutes. The dough ball will become smooth and shiny. Place ball in a greased bowl and cover, allowing to rest for 30 minutes.
   
4. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Slice squash no more than ¼” thick, tossing it in olive oil and salt and pepper. Mix together ricotta and basil, seasoning with salt and pepper. Mince garlic and mix together with EVOO.
5. Once 30 minutes have passed and the dough has doubled in size, punch the dough down and being to shape it, making sure that there is plenty of cornmeal on the work surface to prevent sticking.
6. Spoon oil and garlic onto pizza, making sure that it is spread evenly.
   
7. Spread ricotta mixture on top.
8. Lay squash out in a single layer, covering the entire pizza.
   
9. Top with jam and goat cheese. Place in the oven and bake until crust is fully cooked (if using a pizza stone, this will be about 8-10 minutes).
10. Once pizza is cooked, remove from oven and garnish with mint, cut and serve.