Mediterranean Pizza
on Jan 31, 2025
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With store-bought dough and readymade ingredients, you can make this easy mediterranean pizza. It’s topped with sun-dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, olives and artichokes—all goodies you can find at the olive bar or in jars at the grocery. Before the pizza bakes in the oven, I sprinkle the edges of the dough with sesame seeds. You can serve this pizza with a salad for a vegetarian dinner or make it for a game day appetizer.
Table of Contents
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
This pizza is more about the toppings than the cheese. Whenever I go out for pizza, I always order it with light cheese. That’s because I don’t want the vibrant flavors of the vegetable toppings to be blanketed with a thick layer of cheese.
Refrigerated pizza dough is so convenient for making your own pizza at home. Even though I like whipping up my own dough from scratch, I don’t always have that time to make it and wait for it to rise.
It is so simple to add sesame seeds to the crust, and it gives the pizza more flavor and bite. After you include sesame seeds once on a homemade pizza, you will want to do it as a finishing touch every single time.
The Ingredients
This is what you need:
- Store-bought or homemade pizza dough: Traders Joe’s and Whole Foods both have refrigerated dough. You can use a traditional one with white flour or one with whole wheat flour. It’s up to you. The most important thing is to let the dough sit out at room temperature for at least 2 hours before you start to shape it.
- Pizza sauce: This comes down to personal taste. I tend to prefer a smoother rather than a chunkier sauce for pizza. The sauce I make the most is one I use for my easy tomato rigatoni recipe. It has canned tomatoes. After it simmers, I puree it in the blender.
- Garlic: I thinly slice a garlic clove and put that on the pizza before the rest of the toppings. It’s such a simple way to add garlic flavor.
- Olives: Definitely use pitted olives. It will make it easier to cut them in half to use as toppings. The pizza is good with kalamata olives and castelvetrano olives. Avoid lower quality canned black olives or green olives.
- Sun-dried tomatoes are in jars in the Italian section at the grocery or in the olive bar. Buy tomatoes that are packed in oil instead of the vacuum-packed ones that you have to soak to rehydrate.
- Roasted red peppers: Use a fork to get the peppers out because they come in a jar with liquid and then chop them. You can use equal amounts of tomatoes and peppers or lean more into one than the other.
- Artichoke hearts: Cut them into quarters, so they are more in keeping with the sizes of the other toppings. You don’t want them to be too big, or it will make the pizza hard to slice and eat.
- Spinach: I am a big fan of including greens on pizzas. The heat from the oven softens them. Here I use baby spinach. You could substitute with baby arugula.
- Red onions: I love them thinly sliced on pizzas because they add a sharp but subtle accent with the rest of the ingredients.
- Mozzarella: I add the shredded cheese right after the sauce and sliced garlic. Then I layer on the tomatoes, peppers and olives. I don’t like an overly cheesy pizza. The antipasti toppings are so good that I don’t want to hide them under a layer of cheese. You can also use a shredded pizza cheese blend.
- Feta: I used crumbled feta as a finishing cheese. What I mean by that is that it’s the final topping, adding a salty accent. If you prefer a more mild cheese, you can garnish with grated parmesan.
- Sesame seeds: After the pizza is full assembled, I brush the crust with olive oil and sprinkle it with sesame seeds before baking it in the oven.
- Olive oil: You will need oil for greasing the pan and for brushing the crust.
How To Make This Easy Mediterranean Pizza
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Grease a large baking sheet with oil. It is optional to line the pan with parchment paper.
1. Shape the dough. If it is sticky, you can dust it with some flour. Gently stretch and shape it with your hands. You don’t need a rolling pin. If the dough shrinks back, let it rest longer at room temperature. The final shape doesn’t have to be perfect. It can be a rough rectangle or an oval.
2. Spread on the sauce. Leave a 1/2-inch border at the edges.
3. Sprinkle on the shredded mozzarella cheese and sliced garlic.
4. Scatter the spinach, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, artichokes and red onion slices over the pizza.
5. Top the pizza with crumbled feta cheese. Then brush the crust with olive oil and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
6. Bake the pizza. Give it 12-14 minutes until the crust puffs up and is browned and crisp.
Serving
My go-to side dish for pizza night is a big salad. Try this lemon arugula salad, classic house salad or an Italian chopped salad. If you are serving this for game day, skip the salad. I don’t think there’s big demand for leafy greens on Super Bowl Sunday!
Leftovers & Storage
Pizza might be the best food for leftovers. Let extra slices cool to room temperature before putting them in an airtight container or wrapping them in foil and storing them in the fridge up to 5 days. Always reheat pizza in the oven and never in the microwave. Preheat the oven to 400 degree F and warm slices on a sheet pan for 7-9 minutes.
If you wrap the pizza tightly, you can freeze it up to 1 month. Slice it before you put it in the freezer because then it is easy to reheat individual pieces per meal. Reheat frozen pizza for 13-15 minutes at 400 degrees F. You don’t have to thaw it before putting it in the oven.
Recipe Tips
- Make sure dough is at room temperature. Take it out of the fridge at least 2 hours before you plan to make the pizza. Cold dough is impossible to stretch and shape.
- You can adjust the amounts of olives, red peppers, tomatoes and artichokes. Maybe you like one more than the other. You just need about 1-1/2 cups total.
- Don’t skip the sesame crust. You will be amazed how much flavor these seeds give the pizza.
- You can add pesto to the pizza too. I love pesto. Here I would drizzle it on after I take it out of the oven.
More Pizza Recipes
Cauliflower Crust Pizza
Roasted Vegetable Pizza
Grilled Mushroom Corn Pizza
Sun Dried Tomato Arugula Pizza
Mediterranean Pizza
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil plus more for brushing crust
- 1 pound store-bought refrigerated pizza dough or homemade dough, at room temperature
- 1 cup pizza sauce
- 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
- 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup baby spinach
- 1/2 cup halved pitted kalamata olives and castelvetrano olives
- 1/2 cup quartered sun-dried tomatoes and roughly chopped roasted red peppers
- 1/2 cup quartered marinated artichoke hearts
- 1/4 small red onion, thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup crumbled feta
- 2 tablespoons sesame seeds
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Grease a sheet pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil. You can line the pan with parchment paper if you want.
- Stretch and shape the dough into a rough rectangle or oval, about 9-inches by 12-inches.
- Spread the pizza sauce across the dough, leaving a 1/2-inch border at the edges.
- Sprinkle the mozzarella cheese and sliced garlic on the pizza.
- Top with baby spinach, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, artichokes and red onions.
- Scatter the feta over the vegetables.
- Brush the crust with olive oil and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
- Bake for 12-14 minutes until the pizza crust puffs up and is browned and crisp.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
