Wild Mushroom Pizza with Gorgonzola, Thyme and Pancetta

For award-winning chef, teacher and author of “Outside: Cooking Outdoors - Recipes for the Wild” Gill Meller (@gill.meller), foraging for wild mushrooms is a joyous activity. Based in Dorset, he’s lucky enough to live near woodlands with an abundance of rich, fertile soil where mushrooms thrive, and one of his preferred ways to use them is as a pizza topper. Gill is especially fond of porcini with their nutty and earthy taste and hedgehogs, which are sweet, floral, nutty and slightly crunchy in texture.

Both porcini and hedgehogs are harvested around Europe and North America, but if you’re nowhere near a forest or without a background in foraging, they’re also available at most grocery stores or farmers’ markets. That means you can make Gill’s wild mushroom pizza with gorgonzola, thyme and ham from almost anywhere and during any season. 

Starting with a homemade dough base, Gill tops his pizza with handfuls of wild mushrooms, sweet and salty pancetta (cured, spiced and dried pork belly) and a smattering of gorgonzola. If he’s keeping things super local, he’ll go for Dorset Blue Vinny, a delicious, tangy, aged cow's cheese made just down the road. (While challenging to source outside of the UK, if you want something similar, look for creamy/crumbly blue cheese made from pasteurised cow’s milk.)

The key to having the robust flavours play off each other best here is roasting the mushrooms first in olive oil, garlic and a sprinkling of fresh thyme. Using the oven's high heat will burn off moisture, caramelise the edges and intensify the umami, balancing nicely with the sweet tomato sauce, strong blue cheese and aromatic thyme. 

Another option is to make this a vegetarian pizza: simply drop the pancetta and tear over some cooked, drained spinach for an extra dose of greens and vitamins. No matter how you slice it, this is sure to be your new favourite way to highlight mushrooms!


Difficulty

Servings

Four 12-inch (30 centimetre) pizzas

Prep Time

20 minutes

(not including sauce, dough prep and proof time)
Cook Time

3 to 4 ½ minutes

By Gill Meller

Wild Mushroom Pizza with Gorgonzola, Thyme and Pancetta

Note

For the dough, we recommend our Classic Pizza Dough; just be sure to set aside 3 to 4 hours for proofing before cooking. We’re partial to our Classic Pizza Sauce for the sauce, which only needs 45 minutes. Unless you’re a foraging expert, we strongly advise using shop-bought or farmers’ market mushrooms. If you can’t source porcini, shiitakes will do, and feel free to swap chanterelles for hedgehogs. And if you can’t find pancetta, bacon or prosciutto can also be used. Though the flavours will differ slightly, the result will still be tasty!

For the roasted mushrooms

1. Before stretching and topping your dough, fire up your oven.

Aim for 400 to 450 °C on your pizza stone. You can check this quickly, accurately and from a safe distance with an infrared thermometer.

GillOoni09-11-23MattAustin-14

2. Slice any larger mushrooms you may have into nice thick pieces and halve any small ones, or feel free to leave them whole.

Place your cast-iron skillet into the oven to warm up for 10 minutes. (If it’s nice and hot, the mushrooms will cook quicker.) Using oven gloves, remove the hot skillet from the oven and scatter over the mushrooms. Drizzle 2 tablespoons (25 grams) of olive oil over the mushrooms, then add the garlic and thyme leaves. Season well with salt and pepper, mix the mushrooms around, then even them out. 

3. Pop the pan back into the oven and roast the mushrooms for 2 to 3 minutes, turning them with a spatula once or twice as they cook.

When they’ve lost all their moisture and smell good, remove the mushrooms from the oven and set aside.

For the pizza

1. Place a dough ball on a lightly floured surface, flour your hands and use your fingertips to press it into a small, flat disc.

Working from the centre, push the dough outwards while spreading your fingers, making the disc bigger. Pick up the dough and gently pinch it around the edge, allowing gravity to pull it downwards into a circle with a 12-inch (30-centimetre) diameter. 

2. Using a spoon, spread a bit more than 85 grams of the tomato sauce out evenly over the pizza, leaving about 1 inch (2.

5 centimetres) for the crust. Tear or cut over 62 grams of the mozzarella, then arrange 2 to 3 slices of pancetta on top. 

GillOoni09-11-23MattAustin-21

3. Scatter over ¼ of the roasted mushrooms, then dot the top of the pizza with 50 grams of gorgonzola.

Season the pizza with a pinch of sea salt, a twist of black pepper and drizzle over a bit of olive oil. 

4. Lightly flour your pizza peel, slide it under the pizza and launch it into the oven.

Cook for 60 to 90 seconds, turning it often to ensure an even bake.

5. Remove from the oven, slice, serve and enjoy! Repeat the steps with the remaining dough balls.

 

Gill Meller

Gill Meller is a UK-based chef, award-winning food writer, food stylist and cookery teacher. Gill works closely with chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and River Cottage, and appears regularly on the celebrated Channel 4 series. A contributor to the Observer, Guardian, Waitrose Food, Telegraph and Country Living to name a few, Gill’s recipe column can be found in the award-winning delicious. magazine  every month. Gill's first book, Gather (2016), won the Fortnum & Mason Award for Best Debut Food Book, and both Time (2018) and Root, Stem, Leaf, Flower (2020) were nominated for the Guild of Food Writers’ Cookbook of the Year. He is also the author of the River Cottage Handbook on Outdoor Cooking and, more recently, Outside: Cooking Outdoors - Recipes for the Wild (2022).

Recommended Products

1 / 1