This is the first Tuesdays with Dorie of the new year and what a way to start! There were two elements to this dish, the pizza dough and the onion confit. When I read that this was this week’s recipe, I couldn’t wait to try it. My boyfriend and I both love caramelised onions or anything close to them and we will eat anything with goats’ cheese so this was clearly the topping of choice to go for. What made me most excited about trying this recipe though was that I love pizza but I am allergic to tomatoes. They won’t kill me or anything, I’m just intolerant, but it means I have to be careful and I was buzzing with anticipation that there might be a tasty alternative. I haven’t made pizza dough in years and the last time I did, it was a scone based dough and just didn’t taste like pizza so I was a bit dubious about trying this but I’m glad I did. There was a lot of waiting for the dough to rise (I don’t think my kitchen was warm enough because the first rise took around 2 1/2 hours rather than the suggested 1 1/2) but it was essentially very easy to make. I also appreciated how easy it was to shape; most pizza doughs that I’ve tried before spring back very quickly and you can’t get a decent shape. I ended up having to make mine rectangular to fit into the baking tray.
Now, ‘confit’ is something that has many meanings and I always thought it was something that essentially had two meanings, one for meat and one for other things. However, after trying this recipe, I’ve discovered that it essentially means a food that has been put into some kind of substance to add flavour and/or preserve the food. Essentially, this was caramelised onions that took a hot bath in red wine, red wine vinegar, sugar, butter and thyme. Sounds simple? Well the process of cooking it was but the flavour wasn’t… I used red onions and the sweetness from these combined with the sharp tang of the vinegar and a swirl of red wine. Delicious! All of this ended with a slight hint of thyme and I will definitely be using this confit recipe again – I’m addicted!
After shaping the dough, I topped the pizza with a considerable amount of the onion confit and followed this with a generous helping of goats’ cheese, sliced black olives and a sprinkling of parmesan. The aroma was incredibly enticing but I managed to stave off eating it before it was ready. It was incredibly filling but we both loved it. The flavour of the dough really balanced well with the onion confit and it wasn’t dry, which I was afraid it would be. We will definitely be trying this one again.
A really simple recipe, great taste and my house still smelled of pizza dough this morning, which is just a huge plus! Thanks to Tuesdays with Dorie for this great find! If you’d like to read about the others’ attempts at this recipe, head to http://tuesdayswithdorie.wordpress.com/ or http://theboycanbake.wordpress.com/
Thanks to the boy can bake for hosting this week! I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Your pizza looks delicious!!!!! If I ever try this again I will use red onions…didn’t know which ones since it didn’t say.
Thanks! I think quite a lot of people used white onions but my boyfriend and I both love red onions so I tried it with those and it was really nice – try it definitely!
Great job with the pizza. I loved the goat cheese too. And it is nice to have a pizza that doesn’t have a tomato sauce. I did the onion confit pizza for the first half of the dough and the other pizza I made bbq chicken pizza.
Thanks! Ooo that sounds nice… I might have to try that sometime. I really liked the onion confit as an alternative though.
Looks great!
Thanks!
That’s a very attractive pizza! I’m not fond of onions myself, so I skipped that part, but I liked this dough. And I have to admit, the onions do look good spread on a pizza! Nice job!
Thanks so much! I used to hate onions too but I actually like red onions, especially when they’re softened down with butter and this recipe was brilliant. The dough was really easy to make actually wasn’t it! I was surprised.
i love the smell of pizza! this looks great–back olives are one of my favorite toppings.
It’s such a nice smell isn’t it! Great way to wake up in the morning. I love black olives on pizza too and they balanced really well with the goats’ cheese.
This looks great! if you have a “cold” kitchen, it helps to turn on the light in your oven and proof the dough in there. Depending on how frugal I’m feeling (i.e. where my home temp is at) I need to do that sometimes.
That’s such great advice! Thanks! I’ll try that one
I only have wall heaters so the kitchen’s never that warm.
Great idea, using red onions. It lends such a beautiful color to the pizza. Great post.
Thanks so much! It was delicious too, I think the red wine lent itself well to the colour of the onions and made it more aesthetically pleasing than those who used white/yellow onions. Thanks again!
I liked this dough too – easy to work with. As I was slicing my onion I wished I had used red onions. They turned out red and delicious in the end! Nice work.
It was great to work with wasn’t it! The red onions were definitely a great addition I think but there was still a lot of them to chop! I don’t usually cry when chopping onions but I couldn’t help it this time.
The wine bath definitely made for some tasty onions. This one definiitely changed my idea of what a confit is. Who knew?
Me too! I’d only experienced confit duck before so it was really interesting to find out more about the technique.