Classic Pizza Margherita

ByDavid October 28, 2016June 15, 2021

This Classic Pizza Margherita features slices of Roma tomatoes and fresh mozzarella.
This recipe is perfect for curling up on the couch and watching a movie!

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Remember how I joked that Laura and I spent our honeymoon at the North Carolina State Fair? Well, that’s not entirely true. We were both in grad school at the time, and money was a bit tight. Plus, Laura was in the midst of job hunting, so we decided to hold off an take a delayed honeymoon. Best.decision.ever. Seriously! Laura ended up getting a job offer the week before our wedding, and we transitioned straight into moving mode.

8 weeks later, our house in Atlanta was sold, and we were driving north. A long way north. Settling into our new digs in upstate New York was a rough transition for both of us. Laura had a new job. I was at home toiling away on my dissertation. And we were living in a little 1½ bedroom condo while we searched for a house. It was a particularly rough year for snow, and the management company only plowed the parking lot about once every two weeks. Add in the fact that our downstairs neighbors used a massive speaker (like the kind you see at concerts) as their coffee table and our next door neighbor was a DJ who “practiced” at 8:30am…yeah, we were ready for that delayed honeymoon!

On a late April morning, we quietly snuck out of our apartment (we didn’t want the neighbors to know we were leaving for 2 weeks), and headed out of town. Next stop: Italy. This was seriously the trip of a lifetime! We traveled all over Italy taking in the sights, sounds and tastes. Oh, I could write and write and write about the tastes of Italy. But for the purposes of today’s post, I’ll limit myself to pizza.

We quickly learned that Italian pizza is so very different than American pizza. Both delicious, but both different. And we fell into a really bad habit of splitting a small classic pizza margherita as an appetizer before dinner each night. Pizza plus a glass of wine? Sounds pretty awesome to me! Plus, you know the saying. When in Rome…

I’ve mentioned before that Saturday nights are typically pizza nights in our house…especially in the Fall when there is college football on tv! So the other night, I whipped up a batch of our rustic pizza dough. Instead of making our traditional pizza with pepperoni and jalapenos, I opted for a classic pizza margherita. As with many Italian recipes, this one is pretty simple…and therefore it’s worth splurging for quality ingredients if you can afford it. For instance, I opted for canned San Marzano tomatoes instead of ‘regular’ tomatoes. It cost an extra $2, but one spoonful of that sauce proved that it was definitely worth it!

And I can’t stop without at least mentioning the fresh mozzarella on this classic pizza margherita. We were fortunate enough to have super fresh mozzarella (like made each morning fresh) on our Italy trip. I grabbed some fresh mozz from the store, sliced it up and layered it on this pizza along with some fresh basil leaves. Pizza success! Enjoy!