Two Comfort Foods, One Glorious Pizza

Every so often, we scour the site for cool recipes from our community that we then test, photograph, and feature. This gleeful slice of "carb on carb heaven" comes from 7-time Food52 contest-winner hardlikearmour.

This recipe was love at first sight. I have always been an unabashed carbohydrate lover, and thus have tried a few potato pizzas in my time. However, most feature paper-thin slices of spud, sometimes over ricotta or a white sauce; never before had I heard of—or even thought of—putting riced potatoes on pizza, resulting in a sort of mashed potato pizza mash-up. Thank goodness for hardlikearmour, who fell in love with a pizza bianca from the Roman Candle Baking Company, topped with riced Yukon Golds, Provolone Piccante (Italy's second most popular cheese!), and pieces of lightly caramelized onion; and decided to recreate it for herself.

The recipe does require a bit of advanced planning (be sure to read the recipe through first), but each step is simple. It all starts with an overnight pizza dough. If you are in a pinch, I've found that most pizza doughs (I used this genius one to great success) will do just fine.

When the dough has almost risen, you boil Yukon Golds in some heavily salted water with an onion and bay leaf. (I suspect this step could be done in advance, as well). After its rise is complete, the dough is stretched, drizzled with olive oil, and seasoned with salt (hardlikearmour suggests smoked salt for extra flair) and fresh rosemary. Next, you rice the aforementioned boiled potatoes straight over the dough as if you're making mashed potatoes (but a lot more gleeful and free-form). On top of the spuds goes a flurry of diced red onion for zing, and another round of seasoning.

The pizza goes into the oven to broil until the potato peaks begin to get nice and toasty, after which you cover the pie in grated Provolone Picante (or a mixture of provolone and Parmesan, if you can't find this elusive cheese), some thyme leaves, and a few cracks of black pepper for good measure. Back into the oven until the cheese is bubbling and you have a deeply—almost embarrassingly—satisfying meal that is just screaming to be paired with a lemony salad and a glass of wine. It is, as hardlikearmour writes, "carb-on-carb heaven!"

Hint: This pizza also transports quite well, making for an extremely not-sad desk lunch, and is even excellent leftover, cold, from the fridge.