I am beyond excited to start this new series, inspired by one of my favorite movies Julie and Julia. If you’re unfamiliar with the movie its about a young New York girl who takes on the challenge of cooking her way through Julia Child’s cookbook while blogging about it. I like to think of Tieghan Gerard, the master mind behind the Half Baked Harvest Blog , as a modern day Julia Child- she’s seriously so good guys! She has been one of my favorite bloggers for years and is so incredibly successful for her age!
Although I doubt I will make it through even half of her recipes (she has a TON) I am going to try to do as many as I can! My posts will be a report back from a 20 year old girl with little experience in the kitchen, just trying to improve her skills! (haha… I have no food plan this fall semester!)
To kick off Annie & Tieghan, today I will be sharing Three Cheese and Nectarine Pizza- a scrumptious dinner for a summer night! Before writing this I did not double check to see if she had posted this recipe on her blog and unfortunately I cannot find it! But, if you are interested you’ll have to purchase her Super Simple Cookbook. You will most definitely NOT be disappointed! It is spectacular (& not to mention a New York Times best seller!!) But from now on I will try my best to share recipes that she has blogged about!
Okay let’s do this!
Let’s talk dough
To be quite frank, I was not up for making my own dough! So I purchased Whole Foods pre-made pizza dough… and let me tell you it was fantastic. Super thick and fluffy. For my sister who has Celiac Disease I used Wegmans frozen cauliflower pizza crust. Also delish, just much thinner (obviously)! But also if you’re trying to cut down on carbs – this is a great option.
Like I said… I am a BEGINNER in the kitchen. So rolling dough into a perfect pizza circle didn’t really, um, go as planned. They were more like unsymetrical curvy ovals, jarring out in interesting directions. But hey, they still tasted amazing.
One tip I can give while rolling out your dough is lots and lots of flour!! Throw a ton on the dough and rolling pin, that way you will have an easy seamless time rolling it out and the dough doesn’t get all stuck to the rolling pin. That didn’t happen to me at all… I promise!!
Chop, Chop!
When chopping up herbs (i.e. basil), you want them to be big enough so that they’re flavorful but I personally don’t love a mouthful of herbs. I think I could have cut the basil into smaller pieces.
Cheese Please
The recipe calls for three cheeses (spoiler alert in the name, right)! Mozzarella, like a traditional pie, and then parmesan and bleu cheese! If you’re like me and don’t have the most developed and gourmet palette in the world I would just lightly sprinkle the bleu cheese. I used to crinkle my nose at the thought of bleu cheese but I think I am actually starting to like it in small, small doses! It does add flavor to this pizza though so I wouldn’t skip out on it entirely!
Placement
I am very into aesthetics and am a slight perfectionist so I did spend some time placing every topping in a visually pleasing composition (as seen on picture above this one, of the pizza prior to being cooked.) However, my advice to you– don’t spend to much energy on this. Once the pizza is in the oven the toppings mold into the dough and you will even add more toppings once it is out of the oven (drizzled balsamic and honey and blackberries mmmm….) So don’t stress it!
The Final Consensus
This recipe was really not hard at all! Especially using pre-made dough, really anyone can do it! Trust me if I can, you can!
I know some of the ingredients in this recipe seem a bit funky together, but I put my trust in Tieghan because her recipes always end up amazing! Everyone in my family also loved this one!
Last but not least just make sure you leave time for chopping and cutting everything up! Half Baked Harvest recipes almost always take me longer than they say they will (all of her recipes have an estimated time) because I am just slow… but just be aware of that!
Next week I will be taking on Hawaiian Pineapple Chicken Tacos ! Leave a comment if you have any HBH recommendations or any HBH recipes you want me to try out!
Thanks for reading!
