Prosciutto-Grilled Peach Pizza With Pesto

With peach season in full force, let's celebrate this delicious time of year with the ultimate summer pizza. Juicy, ripe peaches come together with salty prosciutto and earthy pesto for the perfect sweet and savory combination while melted fontina adds a creamy touch of decadence. This prosciutto-grilled peach pizza will be your new go-to summer staple.

Georgia gets all the glory when it comes to peaches, but have you ever tried a ripe Palisade peach from beautiful Colorado? If you haven't, put Palisade peaches on your food bucket list.

These peachy gems grow in a microclimate with hot days and cool nights that bring out the fruit’s natural sugar. This results in unparalleled juice bombs with loads of peachy flavor and sweetness.

Sorry, Georgia peaches. You’re good, but you’re no Palisade peach.

The only down side to Palisade peaches is the short harvest season, so we have to take advantage while we can. Let’s do ourselves a favor and put this prosciutto-grilled peach pizza on our summer menu ASAP.

Fun side note: Palisade is also home to Colorado's wine country and full of small-town charm. If you're looking for a relaxing mountain escape with plenty of wine tasting on the agenda, you'll feel right at home in Palisade.

Ingredients

Let's gather our ingredients and get ready to make this crave-worthy summer pizza. For this pizza, you'll need the following.

• Pizza dough
• Pesto
• Fontina
• Prosciutto
• Ripe peaches
• Red onions
• Egg yolk
• Water
• Cornmeal

Obviously, I highly recommend my beer pizza dough. Not only is it delicious and easy to put together but you can even make it up to three days ahead of time if you'd like. This makes it perfect for entertaining.

If you’re not up for making your own dough, you can get fresh dough from the grocery store, and it is good. I generally find it in the refrigerator case by the prepared food counter at the grocery store. If you don’t see it, just ask someone behind the counter.

For the pesto, I used my feta-avocado pesto sauce. You’re welcome to use your favorite pesto recipe or store-bought brand, but I loved my feta-avocado sauce on this pizza.

And, of course, you can't go wrong with Palisade peaches on this pizza, but if they’re not stocked in your area, use a variety that’s available to you.

How to Grill Peaches

To grill our peaches for this pizza, we turn our grill on high and then generously grease the grates. We can even brush our peach slices with a little canola oil to help prevent sticking. Now we close the lid and give the peaches a few minutes to char.

Generally, I like to go ahead and slice the peaches before grilling. Maybe I’m a little clumsy on the grill, but this means I’ll likely drop a few slices between the grates, so I always cook a little more than I need.

You can avoid losing peach slices by grilling them in halves, but that means less surface area hits the grill. Ultimately, it’s your call. Besides, I can’t find the self-control to not snag a slice or two or a few, so it's best to make sure you have reserves, at least in my case.

How to Hand Stretch Pizza Dough

With our peaches grilled, we're ready to prepare our pizza dough for hand stretching. If you made your pizza dough ahead of time and put it in refrigerator for storing, it needs to sit in room temperature for a couple hours. As you can imagine, cold dough doesn't like to stretch properly. To ensure it doesn't dry out, we place it on a lightly floured surface under plastic wrap.

However, if you made your dough right away and it's already reached room temperature after rising, you can skip this step.

Now we hand stretch the dough so that it's about 10 inches in diameter. When hand stretching, we want to make sure we focus on stretching toward edge of the dough, just before the crust, rather than the center. Messing with the center too much will give us a limp crust. We want to use the length of our fingers instead of our fingertips to push out the dough. You can even pick up the dough by the edge to stretch.

Here's a quick video if you'd like to see it in action. Admittedly, I don't use nearly as much flour as he does during the stretching. I’ve never found it necessary to use that much, but it still gives you a good idea of how it's done.

Whatever you do, please don't use a rolling pin to stretch your dough, which can kill our delicate air bubbles. Save your rolling pin for pie crusts, not pizza crusts.

How to Make

And now to load and bake our pizza. To easily handle our pizza, we place the stretched dough onto cornmeal-dusted parchment paper. If you're fancy and have a pizza peel, you can use that instead.

We then smother the dough with a layer of pesto, top it with loads of cheesy goodness and finish with our red onions. For a perfectly brown crust, we brush it with a mixture of egg yolk and water, and just like that, our pizza is now ready to go into the oven.

After our pizza bakes, we top it with prosciutto, grilled peaches and some fresh basil. Grab a drink and dig in to your new favorite summer pizza. So good, huh?

Expert Tips and FAQs

• Love making pizza at home? A pizza stone makes a big difference in the end results. It's worth the purchase.
• Get that perfect crisp crust by heating the pizza stone at least 45 minutes before baking.
• This recipe calls for ½ pound of pizza dough, which makes a 10-inch pizza. Beginners may find this size is a bit easier to stretch, but feel free to use more dough for a bigger pizza and adjust the topping measurements accordingly.
• A 10-inch pizza makes a good-size meal for two or an appetizer for four. If you need multiple pizzas, simply remove one pizza from the oven and serve. As everyone is enjoying the first pizza, you can bake your next pizza, and it will be ready to go by the time everyone finishes round one.

Perfect Pairing

If pizza and beer are your kind of pairing, I recommend a saison. A crisp, bubbly saison happens to be one of my favorite beers for pairing with food, and this match is no exception. With saison's spicy yeast profile, it's a delicious match with the pesto. At the same time, saisons often come with citrus and stone fruit notes, and that effervescent mouthfeel makes it a great palate cleanser to slice through that cheesy summer pizza.

When you’re in the mood for wine, a lightly oaked chardonnay is a good call. We don’t need a huge oak bomb, but a touch of oak nicely complements the charred peach slices. This kind of chardonnay also gives us some acidity that’s a welcome match to the peach as well as some subtle fruity flavors.

With fresh peaches ripe and aplenty, I hope you try this prosciutto-grilled peach pizza with pesto. I have no doubt it'll become one of your favorite summer meals. Please let me know how you enjoyed this prosciutto-grilled peach pizza recipe in the comment section and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter. You can also catch me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.

Cheers!

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