Meatless Mondays - Peach pizza

I love peaches. I love peaches so much that I bought two boxes of organic Colorado peaches in late August. We've been eating these peaches in everything imaginable as well as putting some away for the winter. Recently we experimented with using these wonderful peaches on a pizza. Weird? Maybe, but it worked! I must admit, the idea was not my own. I saw a description for a peach pizza with a balsamic sauce on the menu of a local restaurant and was intrigued. I didn't get a chance to try the restaurant's peach pizza, but the idea of making one myself stuck in my head. Then I saw this post for a Paprika and Peach Pizza from Bon Appetite and was absolutely sold on the idea of making a peach pizza.

My pizza has a kind of balsamic BBQ sauce base, and I've topped it with some of my favorite pizza toppings - roasted garlic, caramelized onions, and fresh basil. I thought that the sweetness of the peaches really paired well with the balsamic sauce. And, as weird as this pizza may sound, it works flavorwise.

A note on the sauce - this sauce has a strong flavor, and a little goes a long way. The sauce ingredient measurements are as I made it, but it makes a lot - way more than you'll need for this pizza. You could make a quarter of the sauce and have plenty for your pizza. So, feel free to half or quarter the recipe if you would rather not have leftover sauce!


Peach Pizza with Balsamic BBQ Sauce

Sauce:

3/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 cup ketchup
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup tomato paste

Cook for 30 min to thicken and reduce.

Pizza dough:
Use your favorite pizza dough or go here to get my breadmaker pizza dough recipe.

Toppings:
caramelized onions
several cloves of roasted garlic
fresh basil, chopped - to taste
1-2 peaches, peeled and thinly sliced
Asiago cheese, grated

Spread a thin layer of the sauce over the dough. Add the toppings evenly over the pizza. Bake at 425 for 15 min or until crust is done. Enjoy!

While my husband and I liked our peach pizza, the kids won't touch it. They're pizza purists and just want their plain jane cheese pizza. I recently made the pizza sauce from Eating Well Anywhere, and the kids loved it! My son claims it's his favorite sauce ever. My only change was to add a little oregano in to make it taste more pizza saucy. The sauce freezes well.