Big list of pizza topping ideas

When you combine a good homemade pizza dough with a handful of fresh and flavorful pizza toppings, pizza night is on! The key is to use flavorful, quick-cooking ingredients that tend to melt (or cook) quickly in your toppings. second thing? Don’t overdo it and carefully assemble each pizza to bring out the flavors of each ingredient.

Check out this post for a number of popular pizza topping ideas. They’re broken down into Sauces, Cheese, Vegetable Toppings, Finishing Flavors, and a long list of popular pizza topping combinations from years of pizza making. Enjoy! And I highly recommend keeping a pizza journal to keep track of all your favorite topping combinations!

The cheese

Along with your sauce, cheese is often the defining pizza topping. Accordingly, it is important to do the right thing. I avoid pre-grated cheese. They may contain anti-caking agents and mold inhibitors. In general, you want your cheese to be…cheese. My favorites? I love tearing fresh mozzarella balls into chunks, using ricotta blobs, and grating fresh parmesan or pecorino for best results. Occasionally, a spoonful of Greek yogurt poured around the edge of a pizza works beautifully (pictured above). Crumbled feta adds a nice salty touch, and hand-grated Gruyere cheese adds a succulent, melty cheesy note with lots of flavor.

The basis: good pizza sauce

Along with a good, reliable pizza dough, choosing your sauce is another foundation you should make before venturing into the wide world of pizza toppings.

Tomato Sauce: This is a popular easy sauce Tomato sauce, and it goes great with many red sauce pizzas. My only pro tip is to make it ahead of time, it keeps refrigerated for up to a week. When assembling your pizza, make sure the sauce is at room temperature or cooler. Make sure it’s not hot. If the sauce is still warm when topping the pizza, there is a risk that the dough will stick.

Pesto: Pesto pizzas are my favorite and this pesto is my favorite. Made with hand chopped basil, garlic, parmesan, olive oil and pine nuts, it’s a real treat. It’s a pesto recipe taught to me by my friend Francesca’s mother who was visiting from Genoa, Italy. It’s the base for your pesto pizza.

mushroom Rneedle: Use this mushroom ragù to double your favorite mushroom pizza combo. A pizza made with this sauce, topped with pre-roasted mushroom slices, a dash of ricotta cheese, a sprinkling of rosemary and a drizzle of chili oil to finish is a plus.

Pizza topping with vegetables

There are so many ways to get creative with veggie pizzas. Sometimes I pre-cook vegetables, for example artichokes, other times they go raw on the pizza. Some ideas.

Fresh corn, thin asparagus, roasted cherry tomatoes, peas, baked mushrooms, caramelized onions, olives, broad beans, citrus peel, grilled or breaded artichokes, sautéed thinly sliced ​​potatoes, broccoli florets, cauliflower florets.

Pictured above: A grilled pizza topped with mozzarella, fresh corn, quick-pickled serrano chiles, and pine nuts. Rounded off with chive blossoms.

finishing taste

Here you can take your pizza topping ideas from really good to great. The final accents and sprinkles are the punctuation marks on your pizza. The finishing touch I love and use all the time: Lemon Olive Oil, Mandarin Olive Oil, Makrut Lime Oil, Chives and Chive Blossoms, and Hot Honey. Other favorites are:

• Za’atar: I would like to emphasize that. I love the green and scent imparted to white pizza.
• Fresh basil: Forever a classic.
• Herbs: a sprinkling of fresh herbs such as oregano, thyme, fresh basil, chopped chives, lemon verbena
• Flavored Olive Oil: There are so many great oils out there these days, experiment!
• Kale Chips: So easy to make and a popular pizza topping. Place a few stemmed kale leaves in a bowl, add a few drizzles of olive oil, a very generous pinch of nutritional yeast, and a pinch of salt. Bake on baking trays at 180 °C until crispy, turning once.
• Pickled serrano chilies: Always keep these handy! Cut 8 (or more!) serrano chiles into 1/4-inch slices and place in a mason jar with 2 cups of white vinegar. Consume the chilies in a week or two. After that, you can use the vinegar on pizza, in dressings, on salad wraps, and on rice bowls for weeks.
• Citrus peels: (lemon, orange, tangerine, lime, etc.)

Most popular classic pizza combinations

Margherita: simple tomato sauce, good mozzarella, fresh basil after baking the pizza and a final drizzle of olive oil.

White pizza: see the corn pizza above. I also love a white pizza with garlic oil and mushrooms and lots of fresh herbs to finish.

Artichoke Pizza: olive oil or Pesto, sautéed artichoke hearts, mozzarella or ricotta cheese and lemon zest. Pictured directly above, before baking.

Pesto Pizza: There’s nothing quite like a pesto pizza made with ricotta, fava beans, lemon zest and a sprig of arugula to top the pizza as soon as it comes out of the oven.

favorite wildcard Pizza topping combinations

I keep a journal of pizza topping ideas that resonate here. These are a number of current favorites.

• Chile crispy potato pizza: I love a potato pizza. This one (above) was a chilli crisp oil like that from Fly with Jing or KariKari, thinly sliced ​​blanched potatoes, ricotta, broad beans and lemon zest. After baking, finish with some lemon olive oil and lots of chopped chives.
• Chana Masala & Chickpea Pizza: We do this often. Start with a tomato sauce base made with lots of caramelized onions and a generous amount of chana masala (or sometimes garam masala) spice mix. Garnish with chickpeas and a dash of low-fat yogurt (it works better than full-fat yogurt here for some reason). When the pizza comes out of the oven, it’s topped with tons of shredded nutritional yeast, baked kale chips (or fresh arugula), and a drizzle of lemon or basil olive oil. so so so good Shown below with some sesame seeds added.

• Cherry Tomato Kosho Pizza: Start by smearing the pizza dough with a base layer of kosho or other Citrus garlic paste. To do this, add cherry tomatoes, chickpeas, chives, and basil leaves with a drizzle of tangerine (or other citrus-olive) oil after it comes out of the oven.
• Meyer Lemon Pizza: Inspired by my favorite pizza ever, at Bettina’s in Santa Barbara, California. Ricotta cheese balls, pickled red onions, wafer-thin slices of a whole Meyer lemon, pistachios.
• Paneer Pea Pizza: Paneer marinated in turmeric (like the paneer I use for these vegetable skewers), spring onions, chickpeas, sautéed artichoke hearts, tomato sauce, peas, some crumbled goat cheese and serrano chilies. Add plenty of chopped cilantro after the pizza comes out of the oven.
• Garlic Pineapple Pizza: Peel a few cloves of garlic, sprinkle liberally with salt, crush and chop into a paste. Pour into a glass, add 1/3 cup (or so) or extra virgin olive oil and stir well. Spread some garlic oil on your dough for each pizza. Then top with fresh mozzarella, fresh pineapple jalapeno Sliced ​​and cut black olives. When the pizza is done, finish with fresh arugula or crushed kale chips and drizzle the pizza with good-quality olive oil.

More pizza topping ideas

Thirteen ideas for grilled pizza that go beyond the classic margherita. And this post goes into depth on how to grill pizza. Helpful when the weather gets warmer and it’s too hot to use the oven! Have fun making pizza!

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