Pizza with Goat Cheese, Soppressata, Arugula, Egg and Red Pepper Base

Serves 2 - 3

Special equipment: 16" pizza pan. Pizza pans with holes are best for non-commercial pizza ovens, which only get to 550 degrees max (as opposed to the 800 degrees of commercial pizza and brick ovens).

Ingredients

• 1 pound frozen pizza dough
• 6 ounces roasted red pepper in water (you can get these canned or in the deli section). You will use around 1/2 to 1/3 of a standard 12 ounce can
• 8 ounces shredded cheese, a combination of mozzerella, then asiago, pecorino romano, etc. I used pecorino romano for this, b/c it was left over from making pasta carbonara
• 2 - 4 ounces goat cheese
• 1-2 ounces sliced soppressata or other spicy dry cured sausage
• 3 eggs
• 2 large handfuls of arugula
• Crushed red pepper to taste
• EVOO for brushing

Pre-heat oven to 550 or as high as it will go. Pizza will go on the bottom rack. 

Take the pizza dough out the night before or the morning you plan to make the pizza to give it time to rise. Place it in a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap such that plastic wrap is touching all of the exposed dough. This will prevent some of the dough from drying out, and as such will make it much easier to stretch into shape. 

Puree the red peppers in a blender or food processor until smooth(ish). This will be the base for your pizza. You should have 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup. 

Gently pull the dough out of the bowl, keeping it in tact to the extent you can. Form into a ball, and place on a floured surface, then cover with flour. Start to form into the disk of the pizza by grabbing a "corner" of dough and letting the rest fall away, then continue doing this moving around and creating a disk. Once you've got a basic disc shape, expand it by placing both fists under the dough and gradually working them around and out. Try VERY hard to not make holes. I've never successfully "patched" a hole, and holes make the crust around them soggy. 

Once the dough is set, place it on the pan, and stretch it over the sides. Brush the edge with EVOO. Evenly spoon the red pepper sauce onto the dough. It will actually be very sparse, otherwise it will be a soup. With pizza, the axiom seems to be: "use less sauce than you think you need, less cheese than you think you need, and more toppings." 

Evenly spread the shredded cheeses, break up the goat cheese and sprinkle around, distribute the soppressata. Keep back the arugula, eggs, and red pepper. 

Place the pizza in the oven and cook for 4 minutes. Crack the eggs onto the pizza and cook for 3-4 more minutes. 2 minutes after you crack the eggs, sprinkle the arugula over the pizza. The combined cooking time will be right at 8 minutes for a ~500 degree oven. 

Serve with crushed red pepper.