Margherita Pizza

August. The backyard garden is producing. Linda Turner's garden plan — tomatoes, peppers, basil, zucchini — has come to life in Oklahoma summer soil, and the first tomato was so red, so warm, so perfect that I held it in the kitchen and stared at it like it was jewelry. I grew this. From dirt, in my backyard, with water from my hose and sun from my sky. A tomato. My tomato.

I made BLT sandwiches with my tomatoes. The tomato, still warm from the garden, sliced thick. Bacon. Lettuce. Mayo. White bread. The sandwich cost approximately $1.30 if you don't count the tomato (the tomato is free — garden tomatoes are free, which is the most beautiful sentence in the English language). The BLT with a garden tomato tastes different from a BLT with a store tomato. It tastes like ownership. Like sun. Like the fact that I have a yard and in that yard, food grows.

I posted about the garden on the blog: "My First Tomato (From My Own Backyard)." The post wasn't a recipe — it was a celebration. A photo of the tomato in my hand, in my kitchen, by the window. The caption: "I used to prep food on top of the washing machine. Now I grow it in my backyard. Keep going." The post resonated. People shared their own garden photos — a pepper plant on an apartment balcony, herbs in a window box, a single strawberry in a pot. Everyone is growing something. Everyone is trying. The trying is the whole point.

Wyatt is twenty months old and obsessed with the garden. He sits in the dirt and holds the tomatoes and doesn't eat them — he holds them. Studies them. Turns them over in his hands. My quiet boy, my observer, studying tomatoes the way his sister studies books. The Turner children: Brayden runs, Harper reads, Wyatt observes. Three approaches to the world. All of them valid. All of them mine.

The BLT was just the beginning — once I realized how different a homegrown tomato tastes, I wanted to keep finding ways to make it the star. This Margherita Pizza felt like the natural next step: a recipe that strips everything back to tomato, basil, and good cheese, the exact trio growing ten feet from my back door. Linda Turner’s garden plan gave me the ingredients; this recipe gave me a reason to use them all at once.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 27 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 lb pizza dough (store-bought or homemade), at room temperature
1/2 cup crushed San Marzano tomatoes or fresh tomato sauce
8 oz fresh mozzarella, sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 medium ripe tomatoes, thinly sliced
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
Cornmeal or flour, for dusting

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Place a pizza stone or heavy baking sheet in the oven and preheat to 500°F (or as high as your oven will go) for at least 30 minutes before baking.
Make the sauce. Stir together the crushed tomatoes, minced garlic, 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, salt, and pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning. Set aside.
Shape the dough. On a lightly floured surface, stretch or roll the dough into a 12-inch round. Transfer to a piece of parchment paper dusted with cornmeal.
Top the pizza. Spread the tomato sauce evenly over the dough, leaving a 1-inch border. Arrange the fresh mozzarella slices over the sauce, then layer the sliced tomatoes on top. Drizzle with the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil and sprinkle with red pepper flakes if using.
Bake. Carefully slide the pizza (on the parchment) onto the hot stone or baking sheet. Bake for 10—12 minutes, until the crust is golden and charred in spots and the cheese is bubbling.
Finish with basil. Remove the pizza from the oven and immediately scatter the fresh basil leaves over the top. Slice and serve at once.

Nutrition (per serving)

Margherita Pizza — When the Garden Gives You Tomatoes, You Celebrate Them