During the time I spent in Brazil, one of my favorite meals was pizza with a Brazilian twist: Linguiça pizza.
Linguiça isn't actually Brazilian, but came to that country by way of Portugal. It's a Portuguese cured pork sausage seasoned with garlic and paprika - very similar to Spanish chorizo.
Anyway, it's commonly found in Brazil's national dish,
feijoada, as well as a topping for pizza. The linguiça pizzas I enjoyed in Brazil often also had sliced hard-boiled eggs as a topping, and you could try that, as well.
You could use store-bought pizza dough and sauce for this recipe, or check out the links below to my homemade versions.
Ingredients:
1 batch all-purpose
pizza dough (makes 2 thin crust 12"-14" pizzas or 1 large, thicker crust pizza)
Pizza sauce - homemade or store-bought (see my method for making pizza sauce
here)
Parmesan cheese, grated
Fresh basil, chopped
Fresh mozzarella cheese
thinly sliced red onion
2 oz. linguiça, per pizza
Cornmeal, for dusting the pizza paddle
Method:
Preheat the oven to 550 F. (or higher, if it will go higher - I like to cook my pizzas at around 650-700 F.)
Divide the pizza dough in half to make two pizzas and roll into balls.
Prepare your pizza toppings: slice the mozzarella, linguiça and onion, chop the basil, etc.
On a surface sprinkled with flour, roll a ball of the pizza dough out into a circle using your hands or a wooden roller dusted with flour.
Transfer the dough to a pizza paddle dusted with cornmeal.
Spread a thin coating of pizza sauce over the dough.
Sprinkle grated parmesan and chopped basil on top of the pizza sauce.
Add the remainder of the pizza toppings: mozzarella, red onion and linguiça.
Place into the preheated oven and cook until the cheese is bubbly and begins to brown a bit.
Allow the pizza to cool down for a few minutes, slice and serve.
Photos by Ted Scheffler