September 7, 2015: Avengers: Age of Ultron may have been a fun movie, but this summer I fell in love with Pixar's Inside Out. I was so touched and delighted by the film, I found myself with an urge to re-create the sight that gave nightmares to young Riley: the horrifying broccoli pizza she and her Mom found on the day they moved into their new home. Now, I may be strange in that I've loved broccoli all my life; when I was very young, Mom got me to eat it by saying I was a giant eating "little trees." So, the prospect of a vegetarian pizza with broccoli didn't exactly scare me into disliking the movie. However, as an amateur cast iron cook, I'm always interested in trying new foods and new recipes. I know that for some people, "broccoli pizza" is something completely alien.
I did this the hard way, rising the dough all day for the crust and preparing the ingredients from scratch. If you want to use shortcuts such as store-bought pizza dough and/or jarred alfredo sauce, feel free to do so. After all, it's your pizza.
Pans needed: This pizza was prepared in a Birmingham Stove & Range #14 cast iron skillet; the onions were caramelized in a Wagner chef skillet, and the broccoli was cooked in a BS&R 2-quart saucepan.
Bowls needed: One large bowl to mix the dough ingredients. Another medium-sized bowl to rise the dough. A third medium-sized bowl to mix the pizza sauce.
Preparing the dough
Mix yeast, sugar, water and let sit for ten minutes to bloom the yeast. Mix together flour, add yeast mixture, add corn oil and olive oil. After this is mixed together into a dough, add garlic powder, rosemary, melted butter. Mix it all together, cover bowl, and let it rise for five hours.
Coat cast iron pan with extra-virgin olive oil. Plop the raised dough into the pan, and shape it into a crust. Cover and let stand another two hours, so the dough will rise still more while in the pan.
Broccoli and cheese sauce
- 1 large broccoli floret (about 12 ounces or so)
- 1 medium sized onion
- 8 ounces of a shredded four-cheese blend: romano, parmesan, asiago and provolone
- 8 ounces shredded mozzarella
- 1/2 cup cream
- Basil
- Oregano
- Thyme
- Ground pepper
After the dough has been in the pan one hour, with one hour to go, begin preparing the pizza toppings. Cut broccoli into medium pieces, steam or boil it for 45 minutes, then drain and let it sit for another 10 minutes. Slice onion into half-rings (long, thin strips), and saute them in a cast iron skillet with olive oil and butter to caramelize the onions.
Preheat oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
I didn't want the cheese sauce to be liquid, because it was going to go into a 500 degree oven and melt there. It was simply necessary to mix the cheese together in a large bowl, adding cream to give it a consistency similar to cottage cheese. From there, mix in spices.
At this point, the pizza dough needed to be punched down and shaped into a deep dish pizza crust. The crust was baked in the oven by itself at 500 degrees F for seven minutes. Then, the toppings were added: coat the crust with olive oil and brush it over the crust.
It was only a matter of adding the cheese, then topping with caramelized onions and the broccoli. Then, the pizza was baked for 15 minutes at 500 degrees F.
After coming out of the oven, let the pizza sit in the pan for another five minutes, to finish baking the underside of the pizza.
