During the Summer holidays of my second year at university I went backpacking with my mate Ed around Egypt, Jordan and Israel. One of the most vivid memories I have from that trip was when we were staying in Islamic Jerusalem. We were sleeping on the roof of a pretty grotty hostel, but every morning we’d look forward to going to this local bakery for breakfast. This place wasn’t a cafe, but a proper working bakery. As well as supplying bread to local restaurants and shops, they guy who owned it was also kind of famous for his ‘breakfast pizzas’.
They were made on dough base that was smeared with tomato puree, then topped with a triangle of Dairylea style processed cheese, and an egg. They were then baked in a bread oven until the egg was cooked all the way through. Like the hostel, the pizzas were pretty basic, but I remember them being very tasty, and after we’d been there a couple of times, the guy let us make our own and put them in the oven.
This breakfast pizza is a more sophisticated version of the above, and uses some of the same basic ingredients as the pizza recipe featured in this earlier post.
Ingredients (per pizza)
Around 200g pizza dough
Tomato sauce
2 cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced
Teleggio cheese
prosciutto ham or cooked bacon
An egg
Salt and pepper
Method
First of all, turn your oven on to as high as it will go, and then roll out the pizza base into a roughly circular shape and create a crust by turning up the edges. This needs to be high enough to contain the raw egg once you’ve cracked it on top. I make and cook mine in the small frying pan pictured which has a 20cm diameter. This not only helps maintain the right shape and edge, but I also start the cooking process off on the hob before putting the pizza in the oven.
Leave the base for 15 minutes to prove a bit, and then spread on the tomato sauce. Add the thinly sliced tomato, and tear over the taleggio. The taleggio may smell quite strong, but it has a pretty mild flavour, and goes beautifully creamy when melted. Chop up the ham or cooked bacon and place on top, crack a raw egg on the centre of the pizza, and then season with a few grinds of pepper and a small pinch of salt.
Next, put the frying pan on the hob and turn on the gas. This gets the base going in the absence of a pizza stone. Leave on the heat for a minute or so, and then put the pizza in the oven. The pizza should be cooked in around 6 minutes or so. It’s ready when the egg white is cooked through, but the yoke is still soft.
Take out of the oven and eat immediately, either on it’s own or with a bit of rocket. Seriously tasty, and a bit different.
Tags: Bacon, Breakfast, Cheese, Dough, Egg, Ham, Israel, Pizza, Taleggio, Tomato
