Video: Squash Blossom Pizza

You should make this pizza for the same people you had over for the rice-cooker pancake. They will think you are a really special cook/host/individual.

Squash Blossom Pizza adapted from The Mozza Cookbook
makes two 10-inch pizzas

20-24 fresh squash blossoms (see NOTE)
1 lb. of pizza dough, room temperature
handful of flour
2 tablespoons of olive oil plus more to finish the pizzas with
1/2 cup of tomato sauce
8 oz. of burrata that you've let hang out at room temperature for at least 30 minutes though it's even better if the cheese is at room temperature
kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper

NOTE: The Mozza Cookbook doesn't specify whether to use male or female blossoms, BUT according to Marcella Hazan: "Only the male, those on a stem, are good to eat. The female blossoms, attached to the zucchini, are mushy and don't taste good." Therefore, I was sure to buy only the male blossoms. (Here's a picture for you. The top one is male.) (p.s. Can anyone refute this information?)

Preheat your oven to 500F.

Trim and discard the stems from the squash blossoms. Cut a slit down the side of the blossoms, open them up with your fingers, and cut out and discard the stamens. Here is where you want to check for bugs and give the blossoms a good rinse. Then you'll want to pat them dry.

Using your hands and a floured work surface, split your dough in half as evenly as you can. And then stretch one portion of it into a flat, roughly ten-inch disk. (I like to lay my finished disk on a piece of parchment paper and then  slide the parchment onto my baking sheet.)

Brush the rim of the dough with olive oil and season the entire surface with salt. Ladle or spoon 1/4 cup of the sauce onto the center of the dough and use the back of the ladle or soon in a circular motion to spread the sauce over the surface of the dough, leaving a 1-inch rim without any sauce.

Working from the outside of the pizza toward the center, and still leaving space for the crust, lay the squash blossoms in two concentric circles, plus two blossoms in the very center, covering the pizza in a single layer.

(Before you slide it into the oven, prepare your second pizza. That way, you can pull the first one out and put the second one in straight away. Or, if you have two baking sheets that can fit in your oven at the same time, cook them both at once!)

Slide the pizza(s) into the oven and bake until the crust is golden brown and crispy, 8 to 12 minutes.  Remove the pizza from the oven. Cut the burrata into four equal segments, placing one segment on each quadrant of the pizza. Finish with olive oil, a bit more sea salt and some black pepper. Serve.