Caramelized Onion Pizza with Goat Cheese and Arugula has it all…sweet, savory, and salty! Savory goat cheese meets sweet caramelized onions and spicy arugula in this flavor packed pizza. 

Pizza is one of my favorite foods, but not the delivery kind of pizza though the husband definitely likes that kind too. The gourmet, piled high with delicious toppings, light and crispy, kind. The kind that might remind me a little of our trip to Italy, the pizza with thin crust. You get the picture.

I like pizza for lunch or for dinner, but we mostly end up eating pizza on the weekends. Shocking, right? It is a great go to Saturday or Sunday lunch and, when we pile it high with vegetables, we don’t even need to make a side salad. SCORE!

I first made this pizza one night when I was home alone and I devoured it. I mean, really, devoured it. As in, I had an internal battle about how much more I could possibly eat because it was so good. I ended up going back for seconds and thirds, which I later regretted only slightly due to the so-full-I-might-explode feeling that soon followed. Thank goodness for yoga pants.

I used a simple quick recipe for homemade dough when I made this pizza, but you could easily use dough from the grocery store if you’re looking to skip those steps. In my experience, Trader Joe’s has the best pizza dough if you’re looking for pre-made.

Start by combining the quick rising yeast with water. You’ll want to use water that is really warm, bordering on hot but not hot enough to scald and kill the yeast. Add the honey. Stir to combine and set this aside for 10 minutes, until it gets nice and foamy.

If there’s no foam, you either used water that was too cool or old yeast. If there’s no foam, you’ll need to start over because unfortunately, there’s no fixing inactive yeast. This is nice and foamy, just like it should be.

I used my stand mixer for the dough. If you don’t have one, you can easily kneed the dough by hand and use a wooden spoon for stirring. You’ll need to adjust kneed time according to the looks of your dough, instead of using my proposed timing.

Once the yeast mixture is foamy, add 1 1/4 cups of all purpose flour, salt, and olive oil.  Then, knead the dough until it is smooth. Since I was using my stand mixer, I used the dough hook attachment. A wooden spoon will work if you’re making the dough by hand.

Once the dough is smooth, remove it from the mixing bowl. Spray the mixing bowl with olive oil spray and then add the dough back in. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel or plastic wrap and place it in a warm place. During the winter, I usually just set the dough bowl a few feet from my fireplace. You can also preheat an oven to 200 degrees then shut it off and add place your bowl in there. Allow the dough to rise for about an hour, until doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.

While the dough is rising, slice the onions and add them to a saute pan with 2 tbsp butter and 2 tbsp olive oil.

Stir every 5 minutes for about 20 minutes until the onions are nicely caramelized. Add 1/4 tsp of salt once they’re caramelized to your liking. If during this process you feel like the onions have a ways to go but are getting dried out, just add a tsp of olive oil.

Once the dough has risen, roll it out using your hands or a rolling pin. I used my hands to spread this dough on a well oiled cookie sheet. It was a tender dough, so I just smooshed the dough back together if it broke apart at all. If you wanted to pre-make the dough for another meal, just stop the rising process by placing it in the refrigerator after the one hour rise time. Then, resume your pizza recipe after the dough has come to room temperature for 20-30 minutes when you’re ready to prepare.

Rub about a tbsp of olive oil across the dough. Place the dough in the oven for 3 minutes to pre-bake. Once the dough has baked for 3 minutes, remove it from the oven and spread the caramelized onions across the dough.

Sprinkle the parmesan cheese across the onions and crumble the goat cheese all over the pizza.

Add the prosciutto across the top of the pizza so that it gets nice and crispy. Use prosciutto that is nice and thin.

Bake at 500 degrees for about 15-20 minutes until the crust is golden and the toppings are crispy.

 
Top with fresh arugula and a drizzle of olive oil when the pizza comes out of the oven and serve.

Dough recipe from Iowa Girl Eats by way of Half Baked Harvest