MVP Pizza

When you can’t decide on one pizza sauce what do you do? You use all three! This MVP Pizza is made with a beautiful swirl of three sauces: marinara sauce, vodka sauce, and pesto.

INGREDIENTS AND SUPPLIES

Here’s what you need to get this pizza on the dinner table this week. This is an easy pizza because you can just use your favorite brand of jarred sauces.

INGREDIENTS

• Marinara sauce.
• Vodka sauce.
• Pesto.
• Fresh pizza dough. You can find fresh pizza dough in the grocery store. In the store I go to it’s in the same area as the packaged pizza doughs and cinnamon buns, on a lower shelf. You can also buy fresh dough from your local pizzeria! I used a 15oz pizza dough ball for this recipe.
• Mozzarella cheese.
• Olive oil.
• Garlic powder.
• Cornmeal. Optional for dusting the pizza pan.

SUPPLIES

Here’s what you’ll need for kitchen tools!

Pizza pan or stone, pizza cutter.  This pizza works best using a round pizza pan, it gets the prettiest swirled look!

Basting brush. I use this to brush the crust with olive oil. If you don’t have a basting brush, you can also scrunch up some paper towel and dip that in the oil to dab the crust.

That’s really it! Nothing too complex or special!

HOW TO STRETCH PIZZA DOUGH

Maybe this is your first time using fresh pizza dough. I wanted to share some tips on how to work with dough, and how to stretch it out to fit it on your pizza pan!

The dough should be room temperature. This is the biggest step I was missing when I first started making pizzas! I’d take the dough out of the fridge and immediately start working with it. Big mistake! When the gluten in the dough is cold it will snap back when you try to press it out. So let the dough sit on the counter and come to room temperature, I promise this is a game changer in working with pizza dough!

One of my tricks to making a perfect pizza is to treat the exposed crust with olive oil and garlic powder before baking it. That way you don’t have a bland pizza crust, you’ll have a crust that’s the perfect end bite to a loaded pizza like this one!

Prep your surface. Whatever surface you’re working on to press out the dough, make sure it’s been prepped. I like to flour my counter, but you can also use oil according to The Kitchn’s post on pizza dough tips.

Take to the air. Ok I’m not going to tell you to start throwing pizza dough around, but it does help to get the dough off the counter. After I roll it out a few times and start to get the circle shape, I pick up the dough and put it over top of my fists and then use my fists to work the dough in a circle to stretch it out. Check out this pizza tutorial video on Youtube of what this method looks like. Skip to about the 3:30 mark! This really helps stretch the dough the final last bit.

HOW TO LAYER AN MVP PIZZA

Of so if it isn’t obvious yet the pizza gets it’s name from the first letter of each of the three sauces: Marinara, Vodka, Pesto.

I started mine with a dollop of pesto in the center, then alternate the sauces until you reach the crust. The trick here is not going too heavy with each sauce, or you’ll end up with a droopy soggy pizza.

I used 1 cup each of the marinara and vodka sauces, then 1/3 cup of the pesto. Just looked how beautiful this turns out!

To take the final pizza up a notch you can garnish it with some fresh grated Parmesan cheese and if you like heat some crushed red pepper flakes. This is the perfect pizza when you want gourmet pizza right from your kitchen.

Ready to upgrade more of your pizza nights? Check out more of these tasty recipes:

Goat cheese and onion pizza
Marsala pizza
Vodka sauce pizza
Pesto pizza
Red pepper sauce pizza

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