As you may have already realized by our most recent pizza post, we like to take pizza to a new level by preparing pizzas that you just wont find at your local pizza shop. While oversees last week, I had a chance to check out Bayerischer Bahnhof (to read more, go here) in which I was delighted to find baked camembert cheese served with sliced pears as an appetizer and a spatzle dish smothered with cheese and sautéed onions and pears. Now, Bayerischer Bahnhof is by no means the first to bring pears and onions together as a unified force to fight off all hunger around the world (and thus we are not either), but, it was the inspiration for a dish that we just had to put together as soon as I arrived back in the states.
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Pizza and beer go together photosynthesis and the sun (think about it). So, why not bring the unique blend of flavors from pears and onions together into a pizza topping. Brilliant! Thus, we bring to you here a pizza smothered with caramelized pears and onions, sprinkled with some crispy bacon and then piled high with mounds of freshly shredded gouda cheese. Oh, and the sauce . . . well, we really feel as though a tomato based sauce, or even a cream based sauce just would be too overwhelming for the subtle flavors and texture of the pears, so we went with a good old habanero BBQ sauce (actually, it is exactly the same sauce that we used for the last pizza recipe).
While the pizza may have quite a bit of cheese piled on, it is still relatively light when it comes to pizza since there is not a pound of sausage floating on the sea of cheese and nor is there a ton of dense sauce forming a buffer between the pizza crust and the delicious toppings. So, we think that a perfect beer for the caramelized pear and onion pizza is an ESB (or, extra special bitter for those of you that may not be familiar with this type of beer). Specifically, we went with Sawtooth Ale from Left Hand Brewing in Longmont, Colorado. Don’t let the name of this type of beer mislead you. ESB’s are actually far from bitter, especially when compared with IPAs and IIPAs. In fact, what makes an ESB such a great counterpart to the caramelized pear and onion pizza is its balance of sweetness and bitterness, just like the balance created with the pears and the onions. The beer is by no means heavy and will never be dark. And, when it comes to finding a beer for that warm summer evening, there are few things better than a crisp refreshing ESB!
We hope that you find this pizza as delectable as we do!
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