Caramelized Onion and Mushroom Pizza

I know a lot of people are cutting back on meat lately for a variety of reasons.  We have significantly cut back on the amount of eat we eat in our house, as well. I feel like eating a more vegetarian, and sometimes vegan, diet is much healthier than the meat heavy diet we used to eat.  It’s also much more green to eat meatless.  So, for me, it’s a win-win. I try to make all meatless dishes for Meatless Monday each week, and we usually eat a few more meatless meals throughout the week, as well.

One of my favorite meatless dishes is pizza.  It’s easy to make and lends itself well to lots of different flavors.  When you’re trying to eat healthier and mix things up, it’s always good to keep things interesting with new flavors!

So, when Sargento gave me the opportunity to make another recipe from their collection, I opted to try a new pizza recipe. There were lots of pizza recipes to choose from, but I settled for Caramelized Onion and Mushroom Pizza.  If you ask me, you can never go wrong with caramelized onions.

I did adapt the recipe a bit as I was making the pizza.  There are a lot of great flavors going on in the pizza from the onions and mushrooms to the olives and sundried tomatoes and then the cheeses on top.  Since I wanted those flavors to shine through, I decided to skip the pesto. I love pesto, but I wasn’t sure that the pizza really needed it.  I scaled back both of the cheeses in the recipe just a bit, but I did find the blue cheese to be a bit much.  However, I’m not a real big blue cheese fan, so if that’s a flavor that you really enjoy, I’m sure you’ll love it.  That’s one of the things I love most about pizza… You can really adapt it to your tastes!

When I made this pizza, I used my homemade whole grain sourdough pizza crust and baked my pizza on my pizza stone. Both my husband and I really enjoyed it, and I’ll definitely add it to the Meatless Monday rotation!

Caramelized Onion and Mushroom Pizza
(Makes 1 12-inch pizza; Used with permission)

• 1 pound frozen pizza or Italian bread dough, thawed
  (Jen’s Note – Half of my homemade whole grain sourdough pizza crust works well here!)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 large sweet or yellow onion, thinly sliced
• 8 ounces sliced baby bella mushrooms
• 1/2 cup white wine or dry vermouth
• 1/4 cup chopped, drained sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil
  (Jen’s Note – I chose to use dry packed sundried tomatoes to skip on extra oil)
• 2 tablespoons chopped, pitted oil-cured or kalamata olives
  (Jen’s Note – I also skipped the oil here and went with water packed ripe green olives)
• Salt, pepper and hot pepper flakes (optional)
• 1/4 cup pesto (optional)
  (Jen’s Note – As I mentioned above, I chose to skip the pesto)
• 1 cup (4 oz.) Crumbled Blue Cheese
• 2 cups (8 oz.) Fancy Shredded 6 Cheese Italian Cheese

Let dough rise in a warm place until soft and warm, 1 to 2 hours.

Heat oil in a large deep skillet or sauté pan over medium heat. Add onion; cook 10 minutes or until beginning to brown, stirring occasionally.

Add sliced mushrooms and continue cooking 8 to10 minutes until mushroom liquid is evaporated. Add wine; simmer until almost all liquid is absorbed, 10 to 12 minutes. Stir in sun-dried tomatoes and olives. Add salt, pepper and hot pepper flakes to taste if desired; set aside.

Grease a 12-inch pizza pan lightly with shortening. Place warm pizza dough in center of pan. Gently stretch and press to fit the pan and push up a rim of dough around the edges of pan.

Spread pesto over crust if desired. Top dough with onion and mushroom mixture. Sprinkle Blue cheese and shredded cheese evenly over pizza. Brush additional olive oil over edges of dough if desired.

Bake in a preheated 400°F oven 20 to 22 minutes or until the crust is light golden brown and cheese is melted and deep golden brown. (Baking the pizza on the bottom rack for 10 minutes and top rack for 10 minutes creates the perfect brownness of crust and topping.)

(Jen’s Note – I prefer to bake my pizza on a baking stone using a pizza peel and parchment paper.  For more details, check out my tutorial.)

My Kitchen Addiction Disclosure – This post was sponsored by Sargento. Though I have been compensated to write this post, all opinions expressed are my own.