Summer on your plate – Pizza with chicken, peaches, goat cream cheese, thyme & honey

I’ve counted: this is the third pizza recipe on this blog. No other dish is so present here (If you also count tarte flambée, it’s the fifth). However, when you consider how often we eat pizza, this is actually not very much.

In fact, about once a week it’s a What-should-I–cook–today-oh-let’s-make-pizza-day. Although a lot of people find baking pizza frightening and complicated, I think it’s one of fastest, easiest and most versatile dishes.

Cause I make pizza on such a regular basis, I have lot of opportunities to experiment with its components and to vary these. You find two basic pizza dough recipes here and here, but my latest favourite is a variation on these using italian pizza flour Tipo 00 and semolina in a 2/3 – 1/3 ratio. A lot of praises have be sung of Tipo 00 – its secret basically is the higher proportion of gluten – which makes the dough more elastic and your pizza crust as crisp as you thought only your favourite italian cook could make it. Add some semolina and you get a nice texture with some bite.

My go-to-pizza-sauce you’ll find as well here.

So, now to the summerly part of this pizza: It’s juicy and so aromatic vineyard peaches! And fresh sprigs of thyme! And light chicken and goat cream cheese! Finished with some sweet honey! … And it pairs perfectly with a mild summer evening and a glass of chilled white wine….

… and although this must seam a really odd source of inspiration, I have to admit: the flavour combination wasn’t my idea. In fact, a few days ago we had this pizza service flyer in our mailbox. Usually they have rather frightening pizza toppings like sausages, gherkin or sauce hollandaise. Anyway I flipped throught the flyer, when I discovered the “Chicks&Peach” pizza. Although I’m not the one denying that there are days when I thank God for the invention of pizza service, I didn’t want to order this time. I had time and wanted to make my own peachy summer pizza. And so I did … and it was delicious!

There’s just one variation I would probably make the next time: I found the chicken breast I used a bit flavourless in combination especially with the peach and thyme flavour. So, next time I think I would use rather the more intense meat from a chicken leg or wing.

Pizza with chicken, peaches, goat cream cheese, thyme & honey (2p.)

ingredients
pizza dough (see notes above and recipe here), tomato sauce

150 g chicken breast (or meat from leg or wing), 2 (vineyard) peaches, about 3 tablespoons goat cream cheese, fresh thyme, 2 tablespoons honey

preparation
Prepare pizza dough and tomato sauce.

In a small pot cook chicken in vegetable stock for about 15 minutes. Take out, cool out and tear or cut in small pieces. Halfen peaches, core and slice.

Preheat oven to 200° C. Roll out pizza dough, spread tomato sauce and top with chicken, peaches, dollops of goat cream cheese and fresh thyme sprigs. Bake for about 15 minutes until the crust looks crispy.

Take pizza out of the oven and drizzle with honey. Serve immediately.