Heart-Shaped Pizzas

An delicious way to say ‘I love you’ – these easy Heart-Shaped Pizzas are perfect for Valentine’s day, anniversaries, date nights, birthdays – or any time you want to show your love with food!

Course Main Course, Pizza

Cuisine British, Fusion, Italian

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 10

Total Time 25

Servings pizzas

Calories 862kcal

Author Eb Gargano

Ingredients

500 g strong white bread flour (See Note 1)
1 teaspoon salt (See Note 1)
7 g fast action yeast (See Note 1)
1 tablespoon olive oil
350 ml lukewarm water (you may not need all of this, see below)
350 g passata (I use Cirio Passata Rustica)
120 g pepperoni cut into heart shapes
250 g drained weight fresh mozzarella torn (or grated mozzarella or grated cheddar – see Note 2)
2 teaspoons oregano
Black pepper to taste

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 230C / 210C fan / gas mark 8 / 450F. Grease 4 large (12inch / 30cm) pizza trays with a little olive oil. (Or 8 smaller ones – See Note 3.)
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, yeast and salt, then add the olive oil and stir. Slowly add the water until the mixture comes together to form a dough – the dough should just come together and should not be too wet/sticky. (You may not need all the water. Start with 300ml and see how it goes, add it in little bits after that.)
Knead the pizza dough for 5 minutes on a floured surface.
Divide the dough up into 4 equal sized pieces (or 8 if you are making small ones) – I use my scales to make this easier and more accurate.
Roll out each piece out to roughly the size of the pizza tray. Put the rolled out dough in the pizza tray and gently shape into a heart shape by pulling the middle down at the top and pushing the sides in at the bottom to form a point.
Top each pizza with 4 tablespoons passata. Spread the passata all over the base using the back of a spoon, leaving a thin border all around the pizza. (Don’t use too much passata or it will make your pizzas soggy.)
Next, add the torn mozzerella cheese evenly over the pizza.
Next, cut the pepperoni into heart shapes, using kitchen scissors, and arrange on top of the pizza.
Then scatter with oregano and black pepper.
Cook your pizzas in your pre-heated oven for 10-15 minutes. You may find you need to move the pizzas around in your oven so they cook evenly.
The pizzas are ready when the cheese is bubbling and the base is a light golden brown and crispy, not soggy. (If you discover as you are cutting the pizza that the base is still a bit soggy, just pop it back in the pizza tray and back in the oven for a couple more minutes.)

Notes

For an even quicker and easier base, use a 500g pack of bread mix instead of the flour, salt and yeast. I find the ciabatta and sourdough ones work particularly well for pizza!
What cheese you use is up to you. You can use grated mozzarella, grated cheddar or torn fresh mozzarella. My personal preference for this pizza is fresh mozzarella. Please note 250g drained weight = 400g undrained.
If you don’t have a pizza tray, use a baking tray or cake tin of a similar size instead.
The trick to getting a super thin crust is to only knead for 5 minutes and not prove the dough, so be careful not to leave the pizza dough to rest too long at any point or you will find the dough rises and you’ll have thick crust pizzas!
Suitable for freezing.
Nutrition information is approximate and meant as a guideline only.

Nutrition