The Cottage Cooking Club is a group of bloggers working their way through Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s book River Cottage Veg. Each month, the tremendously talented Andrea of The Kitchen Lioness, chooses 10 recipes from the book, based on seasonal ingredients and variety of choice. The members then choose between 1 and 10 recipes to prepare and blog about. There are choices from throughout the book, ranging from the simplest preparation to truly company-worthy projects – with a couple of desserts thrown in!
This month, I chose to make Beet Pizza. Love beets, love pizza… What a great option. Now, I have to say that there are many folks who love the recipe for Magic Bread Dough in the book – and it’s the suggested dough for the pizza. I have been incredibly spoiled, however, by my brother Clayton’s pizza dough. I happen to think it’s the best on the planet – and I’m not just saying that because he’s my favorite youngest brother. Really, it is! He has a wood-fired pizza business with two different ovens – one installed inside a custom trailer food kitchen, and the other as a stand-alone one. His business, Pyromaniacs Pizza does to food truck events, but also catering and also food service at BYU football and other events. It’s the best.
But I digress. Since I am not as much a fan of the dough from the book, I decided that I would try out (again) the prepared dough that I could get here locally. I hadn’t used it in a long time and thought it was worth a try. I also went with the prepared roasted beets I buy, and some shredded cheese I had on hand. Caramelized onions are the other main ingredient – tomato sauce is optional.
Hugh uses a lot of caramelized onions – particularly for his pizza. I think they are fabulous, but often get too busy, or don’t think of them. I decided to make a big batch, even though I was only making one pizza at the moment. They are, of course, simplicity itself. Sliced onions slowly cooked until they are nicely browned. I often don’t quite take the time to get them as browned as I would like, but they are always delicious.
Once those are complete, the rest is easy. I heat my pizza stone in the oven (about 450 degrees for this) while I’m prepping the pizza. I’ve found that in my home oven, I really prefer to put the pizza on parchment and then on top of the stone. I don’t like the additional flour or cornmeal that (at least for me) is required to easily get the pizza in and out of the oven, so that’s what I did here too. The parchment gets really brown, but doesn’t seem to be a problem.
The pizza looked terrific from the oven. I wish I’d made the trip back to the store to get a different cheese (and I also think that just a bit of goat cheese would have been great here in addition to the required cheddar). Mine was a blend of good cheeses, but just not the depth of flavor that would have been good.
I tried mine with a drizzle of balsamic glaze to make a counterpoint to the sweet flavors of the beets, onions and cheese. It was good, but I think something like the vinaigrette we used for the beet tartine would have been even better. The tomato sauce might have done the same thing, I’m not sure.
This was certainly fun to make. I’ve enjoyed all of the different pizza combinations in the book. I need to make that dough and get it into the freezer! Because this is an easy, delicious lunch, or a light dinner.
If you’d like to see what the other members of the Cottage Cooking Club made this month – you can find the links to their blogs here.
dulceshome 
Dear Candy, I must say I am really happy that you managed to join us again this month for the Cottage Cooking Club – I know that January is a crazy busy month for all of us and I truly appreciate you all taking the time to participate! The Beetroot Pizza was actually one of my favorite recipes this month – it has a certain earthy sweetness from the beets and the onions (I forgot to mention in my post that I used red onions for this recipe) and from the tomato sauce but somehow with the cheese and its inherent saltiness, I found it to be a very balanced flavored pizza indeed. Your looks wonderful and I am glad that you used ingredients readily available and the recipe still worked – even if you had preferred a little vinaigrette on the side! Maybe next time!
Thank you for another lovel ypost – aalways such s edlight cooking along with you,
Andrea – have a great weekend
That looks wonderful! I need to have a pizza-making day next time I’m out visiting my parents.
You were very smart to make extra onions. Every time I make them I wish I had more. I skipped the sauce on this one, but agree that a vinaigrette would have been nice.
Wow I have never tried a beetroot pizza, it looks delicious!
That pizza does look fantastic! And I love the idea of a vinaigrette to balance the sweetness. I’ll have to give this one a try.
Candy, I am so glad you made this. Beets are one of my favorite veggies. Remember how beautiful the Baby Beet Tarte Tartine is? Since I didn’t bring my pizze stone and paddle in my gear I hauled to my California rental house this winter (it’s a wonder I didn’t, I brought everything else including my kitchen sink!), I passed on the pizza. However, I think I’ll just give it a go anyway in the next two months. I know you’re like me — just wishing I had more time (and, mouths to feed) to make all these recipes every month. I think they are creative, easy and very good. Hang in there, Candy.
I love beets and I love caramelized onions and I love pizza too, but I wasn’t sure about the combo. You’ve convinced me. I’m going to have do this one as a make up. Glad you shared your enthusiasm.
We love beets too, not sure why I did not choose this recipe to make. Your pizza looks tasty! Goat cheese sounds like a great addition – a favorite of mine. I loved the beet tartine – that was fabulous, wasn’t it? And one can not go wrong with caramelized onions! Sooo good.