Garlicky Mushroom Ricotta Pizza with Wild Arugula + Aged Balsamic: Sautéed mushrooms are topped with ricotta and Parmesan cheeses and baked into a store-bought pizza crust for an easy, elegant weeknight meal!
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Garlicky Mushroom Ricotta Pizza with Wild Arugula + Aged Balsamic

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Sautéed mushrooms are topped with ricotta and Parmesan cheeses and baked into a store-bought pizza crust for an easy, elegant weeknight meal!

This post may contain affiliate links.

Let’s talk pizza. Pizza is such a classic meal. It’s a staple of birthday parties, movie nights, and late night hang out sessions.

It also happens to be one of the tastiest, easiest, most customizable meal options for home cooking.

Garlicky Mushroom Ricotta Pizza with Wild Arugula + Aged Balsamic: Sautéed mushrooms are topped with ricotta and Parmesan cheeses and baked into a store-bought pizza crust for an easy, elegant weeknight meal!

There are different levels of at home pizza-making, depending on the amount of time and effort that you want to put into it. The way I see it, there’s a pizza scale, of sorts:

  1. Order pizza delivery at home. No need to get out of your pajamas.
  2. Go out for pizza at a local pizzeria (bonus points for legit brick oven pizza at an Italian pizzeria, which is luckily very easy to do here in New York)
  3. Buy a frozen pizza and bake it at home.
  4. Pick up a ready-made pizza crust and top it/heat it up at home.
  5. Buy pizza dough from the grocery store or a local pizzeria and prepare it at home.
  6. Make pizza dough from scratch (I like this recipe for Lazy Pizza Dough from Smitten Kitchen) and bake it on a screamin’ hot pizza stone or steel at home (homemade pizza sauce optional, but encouraged)
  7. Grow your own wheat, harvest it, mill it… OK I’m totally kidding here, though there’s one member of my Supper Club who just might go that far for a recipe if he had the time…

It’s all about options here, folks.

For this particular pizza, I didn’t want to go all out and make my own dough, so I took a middle-of-the-road option – #4 on the good ol’ pizza scale.

But who says we have to stick to the standard tomato sauce, shredded mozzarella and pepperoni format? Not that it wouldn’t be totally delicious, but we can do better than that, can’t we?

Garlicky Mushroom Ricotta Pizza with Wild Arugula + Aged Balsamic: Sautéed mushrooms are topped with ricotta and Parmesan cheeses and baked into a store-bought pizza crust for an easy, elegant weeknight meal!

I had some mushrooms leftover in the fridge, and I thought they would go beautifully sautéed with lots of garlic, a shallot and a little heat from some red pepper flakes.

I picked up a rectangular artisan flatbread from the grocery store to work with for my pizza.

Any shape of crust would work here, but rectangular pizza just looks fun, doesn’t it? This would be perfect for a dinner party starter or as a main course (which is how we enjoyed it).

The creaminess from the ricotta is absolutely perfect here, and the fresh greens at the end add a nice peppery bite.

Aged balsamic vinegar and a nice extra-virgin olive oil dress this pizza up enough so that you don’t need any sauce. It’s kind of like a mix between a mushroom pizza and a salad pizza (side note: I had never heard of salad pizza before moving to New York. If you find a place that makes a good salad pizza, I highly recommend giving it a try!).

This pizza rocked our world! I’m excited to experiment with other fun flavor combos soon. It’s been way too long since I’ve made pizza at home!

Looking for more pizza and flatbread favorites? Check out these 5-star recipes:

What are your favorite pizza toppings? I’d love to hear about them in the comments section below!

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Garlicky Mushroom Ricotta Pizza with Wild Arugula + Aged Balsamic: Sautéed mushrooms are topped with ricotta and Parmesan cheeses and baked into a store-bought pizza crust for an easy, elegant weeknight meal!

Garlicky Mushroom Ricotta Pizza with Wild Arugula + Aged Balsamic

★★★★★ 5 from 1 reviews
  • Author: Big Flavors from a Tiny Kitchen - Ashley Covelli
  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Cook Time: 20 minutes
  • Total Time: 30 minutes
  • Yield: 6-8 Slices of Pizza 1x
  • Category: Dinner
  • Method: Oven
  • Cuisine: Italian
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Description

Sautéed mushrooms are topped with ricotta and Parmesan cheeses and baked into a store-bought pizza crust for an easy, elegant weeknight meal!

Ingredients

Scale
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 shallot, thinly sliced (about 1/4 cup)
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • Pinch of red pepper flakes
  • 8 ounces sliced mushrooms (I used shiitake and baby bella)
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 ready-made pizza crust (I used a 7 ounce Stonefire Artisan Flatbread)
  • 6 tablespoons part-skim ricotta
  • 2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan
  • 2 tablespoons fresh chives, minced or snipped with scissors
  • 1–2 handfuls wild or baby arugula
  • 2–3 tablespoons aged balsamic
  • 2–3 tablespoons good quality extra-virgin olive oil

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 425°F with a pizza stone on the bottom rack if you have one (you want the pizza stone to heat up with the oven).
  2. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large, non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add shallot, garlic and red pepper flakes and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the shallot begins to soften. Add mushrooms and salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms are well browned, about 7-10 minutes.
  3. Place pizza crust on top of a pizza peel or wooden cutting board. Top crust with mushroom mixture and spread evenly, leaving a 1-inch border around the outer edges. Dot with ricotta and sprinkle Parmesan and chives over top.
  4. Transfer pizza to the preheated pizza stone (or a baking sheet, if you’re using that instead) and bake for 5-6 minutes (8-9 minutes without the pizza stone).
  5. Remove pizza from oven and transfer to a cutting board. Scatter wild arugula over top and drizzle with aged balsamic and olive oil. Cut into slices and enjoy!

Keywords: mushroom, ricotta, pizza, weeknight dinner

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Garlicky Mushroom Ricotta Pizza with Wild Arugula + Aged Balsamic: Sautéed mushrooms are topped with ricotta and Parmesan cheeses and baked into a store-bought pizza crust for an easy, elegant weeknight meal!

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