We love pizza and my husband really loves it on Sunday nights during football season, or if we miss it on a Sunday night, he’s happy to have homemade pizza on a Monday night for his football game viewing. Truth be told, Dennis could, and would, eat pizza every night if I made it every night. It’s safe to say it’s probably his favorite dinner.

Our daughter, Kylie and her husband, Jacob were coming over on Halloween to hand out candy and enjoy the evening with us. I love to make chili on Halloween, but I knew this wasn’t going to be either of their favorites for dinner so I offered to make homemade pizza instead. I made a few different kinds, because everyone has their own tastes and who doesn’t like leftover pizza for breakfast, lunch or dinner the following day.

Since I wasn’t going to be making chili, I was determined to make my pizza with fall flavors. I decided to roast a package of pre-cut butternut squash I picked up at Trader Joes and caramelize one red onion later in the afternoon to have it ready to put on my “fall” pizza.

I usually use Trader Joe’s fresh pizza dough and that’s what I chose to do on what was sure to be a really busy night filled with trick-or-treaters.

I let my pizza dough rise in a glass bowl for most of the afternoon. I’ve been finding that it’s much easier to stretch it to the pan if it rises for longer than the package recommendations of 20 minutes.

After stretching my dough to fit the pizza pan, I put it in a preheated 425 degree oven to get started for 6 minutes. I find this helps to crisp the crust just a bit. Once I pulled the crust out of the oven, I poured and spread my desired pizza sauce over the crust. I like a lot of sauce and like it when it is spread almost to the edges of the pizza. On top of the sauce I sprinkled most of a 16 ounce package of shredded mozzarella cheese. I like to use the lite mozzarella that Trader Joe’s sells. You don’t have to use the lite cheese. Feel free to use your favorite. On top of the mozzarella, I placed pieces of burrata that I broke up with my hands. Next, I placed the roasted butternut squash and caramelized onion .

To roast the squash, I placed it on a sheet pan, drizzled it with olive oil and sprinkled it with kosher salt and pepper. I roasted it at 425 degrees for 18 minutes. While that was roasting, I sliced a red onion and caramelized it in olive oil. I removed the onion from the pan and set it aside until I was ready to make my pizza. Once the butternut squash was done, I dried it with maple syrup and set it aside until it was time to add to the pizza.

After the pizza was finished baking in the oven (425 degrees until cheese was melted and browned – about 18 minutes), I added prosciutto and fresh basil.

This pizza was really, really good. My friends, Jane and Lauren, stopped over to say hi on Halloween night. I was thrilled to answer the door and see them, I absolutely love seeing everyone on Halloween. Jane hadn’t had dinner yet, so I invited her to enjoy some pizza. She loved it!!

Ingredients

1 pizza dough

20 ounce package of cut up butternut squash

1 package of prosciutto

1 red onion

fresh basil

1 jar pizza sauce

shredded mozzarella

1 ball of burrata

olive oil to drizzle on squash

kosher salt and pepper

maple syrup

Directions

1. Place dough in bowl drizzled with olive oil to rise. I let it rise of 3 hours.
2. Scatter squash onto a large sheet pan and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place into preheated 425 degree oven for 18 minutes. When done, drizzle with maple syrup. Set aside until you’re ready to assemble your pizza.
3. Slice onion and caramelize in olive oil until softened and browned a tad.
4. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Stretch dough onto pizza pan and bake for 6 minutes.
5. Spread pizza sauce onto crust. Sprinkle with mozzarella and add burrata. Add squash and onion over pizza. Place into oven for 14-18 minutes, until your cheese has melted and has browned.
6. Once you pull your pizza from the oven, add slices of prosciutto and fresh basil to pizza.

Enjoy!

Until next time, Kris