The truth is I love comfort food just like everyone else, but even for hard core food snobs like me, though it’s hard for me to admit this, I like simple foods. For some it’s a comforting bowl of mac and cheese, for others a bowl of soup, while for others it’s a carton of ice cream. But the one food that warms the cockles of my soul like no other is pizza. Any kind of pizza. While we used to love to order pizza on a weekly basis, once we moved here to Calgary, we haven’t been able to find that special pizza joint, that sells just the perfect pizza for us. So out of necessity, we learned to make our own. Making pizza dough would have scared me a few years ago, and guaranteed I would have always opted to buy it from the grocery store. But then what food blogger would I be if I wouldn’t learn to make my own. And so I did, and ever since then we’ve always made our own pizza with our own pizza dough. But the stars of this recipe are by all means, the ingredients. Caramelized onions, although not mentioned in the title of this recipe, is an important if not necessary ingredient in this remarkable pizza. Caramelized onions make me all happy inside, and if I could put them on everything I would. Although I despise chopping onions, because even by now I have not learned how to cut onions without crying my heart out, I adore caramelized onions and their sweetness. However, what makes this pizza unique is most definitely the artichokes and the sun dried tomatoes. I used sun dried tomatoes packed in oil, they’re full of flavor and richness. Same with the artichokes. What makes me happier is the fresh mozzarella I chose to use. It’s so delicious sometimes I could stuff my face with this cheese. As you layer the cheese, try very very hard not to stuff it all in your face, it’s not easy, but you must try. Assembling the pizza is an easy task. I chose to start by layering the caramelized onions, followed by the fresh mozzarella cheese. I decided to shred my mozzarella this time, but most of the time I would just cut it in slices and use it like that. I then layered the chopped artichokes, followed by the sun dried tomatoes. And last but not least I added another favorite ingredient of mine, goat cheese. Goat cheese adds a tangy flavor to this pizza which I feel works really well with the artichokes and sun dried tomatoes. The one secret I do have with making my pizza is to crank up the oven temperature to as high as it will go on your oven, this way it will not quite end up like baking the pizza in one of those expensive pizza ovens, but you will come damn close. And because it’s Christmas season and I love garnishing all my foods, I generously garnished this pizza with parsley before serving it, so now it looks like a Christmas pizza. A very simple meatless pizza, but packed full of flavor from some great ingredients.
