Summer Fruit Pizza with Rosemary & Basil
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This tart works best with summer peaches, nectarines, plums and cherries, and autum pears and apples. Juicy ingredients like rhubarb. Raspberries and strawberries don’t work as well.
A great trick for cutting kitchen time is to shake together the flour, salt, sugar and cut up butter in a heavy freezer bag and freeze.
You could write on the bag, "add 1 beaten egg and 2 to 3 tablespoons of water." The frozen blend goes right into the processor. The extra chill is a little insurance against melted butter and possibly a tough crust. Do use organic ingredients if you can.
Ingredients
Pastry- 1-1/2 cups unbleached All-purpose flour, (measured by spooning flour into cup and leveling)
- Generous 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 stick, plus 2 tablespoons (5 ounces) cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 2 to 3 tablespoons ice water
- 3 to 4 firm-ripe peaches or nectarines (1-1/2 to 2 pounds), or 8 plums, or 2 large handfuls of tart or sweet cherries, pitted
- shredded zest of a medium lemon
- 10 to 12 fresh basil leaves, torn
- leaves from a 4 to 5 inch fresh rosemary branch, crushed
- 1 generous teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 to 3/4 cups sugar
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
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Instructions
- 1. For the pastry, combine the dry ingredients in a food processor or large bowl. Cut in the butter with rapid pulses in the processor, or rub between your fingertips until the butter is the size of peas. Add the egg and 2 tablespoons of water. Pulse just until the dough gathers in clumps, or toss with a fork until evenly moistened. If the dough seems dry, blend in another 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon water.
- 2. Oil a 14- to 16-inch pizza pan. Roll out the dough on a floured board to an extremely thin 17-inch round. Place on the pan. Trim away all but 2 inches of overhanging crust. Fold it over toward the center of the pie so you have a 1 inch wide border around the pizza. Refrigerate 30 minutes to overnight.
- 3. Set an oven rack in the lowest position and preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Peel the peaches. If using nectarines, peel only what is easy to remove. Do not peel plums. Slice the larger fruits into 1/4-inch wide wedges. Cut the plums into quarters. Do not cut the cherries.
- 4. Take the pizza pan out of the refrigerator. Arrange the fruit pieces on the pastry so they barely touch or not at all. Spread them out to cover the entire pan. Sprinkle with the lemon zest, basil, rosemary, cinnamon, pepper, sugar (use the extra quarter cup for the plums so they are coated with sugar), and sprinkle with the oil.
- 5. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until the the fruit is golden brown and the crust is crisp. Cover the crust's rim with foil if it browns too quickly. Remove the pizza from the oven and serve hot, warm, or at room temperature.
About The Show
In 1994, acclaimed food writer and cooking teacher Lynne Rossetto Kasper was receiving accolades for her debut book, The Splendid Table, which at that time was the only book to have won both the James Beard and Julia Child Cookbook of the Year awards. Among the many people enchanted by the book was producer and foodie Sally Swift, who thought the time could be right for a radio program on food.
