Last updated: July 25th, 2024
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This delicious, upscale prosciutto and arugula pizza recipe is easier than it looks and makes the perfect date night dish!
Date night pizza dinners don’t have to be out at a fancy restaurant. You can enjoy your favorite specialty pizza and a nice bottle of wine in the comfort of your own home! Prosciutto and arugula pizza is one of the most classic date night pizzas around. With a crispy and savory premium meat combined with a light and fresh leafy green, this pizza will make you feel like you’re out at your favorite Italian restaurant.
What This Recipe Entails
Arugula and prosciutto pizza is one of the easiest specialty pizzas to make. With no need to make or cook any ingredients ahead of time, just assemble everything and pop it right in the oven!
- Prep time: 10 to 20 minutes depending on if you follow our recipe for pizza sauce or opt for a store-bought option.
- Cook time: 20 minutes
Our prosciutto and arugula pizza is an upscale date-night dish that uses fresh, high-quality ingredients for tons of flavor. And even though it’s a specialty pizza, it’s still easy to make! Store-bought dough and an easy homemade pizza sauce form the base for just three simple toppings: mozzarella cheese, prosciutto, and baby arugula. And if you want to make this pizza even easier, feel free to use your favorite store-bought pizza sauce as well.
Prosciutto and Arugula Pizza Ingredients
Everything we’re adding to a classic pizza is right in the title! But just to make sure you don’t miss anything at the store, here’s what you’ll need to make our prosciutto and arugula pizza:
- Pizza dough
- Flour (for stretching the pizza dough)
- Pizza sauce
- Shredded mozzarella cheese
- Prosciutto
- Baby arugula
- Sea salt
If you want to make your own pizza sauce at home (which we highly recommend!) then we have the perfect light and easy sauce for you. To learn more about what you need to make this easy pizza sauce, check out its post here!
How To Make Arugula And Prosciutto Pizza
If you are planning on making our easy homemade pizza sauce, then we suggest making that first, before starting on your pizza! Once that is done, here is how you make our prosciutto arugula pizza:
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
- Lightly dust a clean work surface and your hands with flour. Stretch the dough using both hands, until it is roughly the size of the pan. Use additional flour as necessary to prevent the dough from sticking to your hands or your work surface.
- Lightly dust your pan with flour and gently lay your stretched pizza dough on it.
- Spoon the pizza sauce onto the dough a little at a time, spreading it around with the back of a spoon. Continue until the dough is covered with a thin layer of sauce, leaving about a half-inch border for the crust.
- Next, sprinkle handfuls of mozzarella cheese onto the pizza. We recommend starting from the edges and working in towards the center, using a lighter hand, and then adding more cheese where needed to fill in the gaps.
- Generously top the pizza with prosciutto and sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt.
- Bake for about 16 to 18 minutes, or until the crust starts to turn golden and the cheese is bubbly and lightly browned.
- Top the pizza with a few handfuls of baby arugula, then cool for at least 2 minutes before slicing.
- Gently loosen pizza from the pan with a spatula. Then slice, serve, and enjoy!
Tips For Making The Perfect Prosciutto Arugula Pizza
- Use a slightly thinner layer of pizza sauce for a tasty, subtle tomato base that doesn’t distract from the bold flavors of the prosciutto and arugula. If you don’t want to make our homemade sauce, use a simple tomato and basil flavored jarred sauce, or even crushed San Marzano tomatoes for the best flavor.
- A high-quality prosciutto sliced fresh from the deli packs a ton of salty flavor into this pizza. While store bought packaged prosciutto doesn’t need to be cooked, we enjoy the crispy texture that it gets when put on the pizza before cooking.
- Tear the prosciutto into small pieces for topping the pizza so it gets nice and crispy in the oven, and isn’t too difficult to eat.
- Wait until after the pizza is baked to top with fresh arugula. If you put the arugula on before baking, it will become shriveled and lose its fresh flavor.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does prosciutto go on pizza before or after cooking? Either! It just depends on what you want. If you want to keep the chewy texture of the prosciutto, then put it on after cooking. If you want some crispy prosciutto, you can cut it into smaller bits and put it on before cooking. It really just depends on the pizza you are making and what you like! Either way, you can’t go wrong.
Does arugula go on pizza before or after baking? Arugula should either go on after your pizza is done baking, or with about a minute or two left during baking. This makes sure that the arugula wilts slightly, but keeps its fresh flavor and texture. If you were to put arugula on your pizza before baking, it would shrivel and crisp, losing both the texture and flavor that it’s supposed to add.
Does store bought packaged prosciutto need to be cooked? Store bought prosciutto comes in two main types, prosciutto cotto and prosciutto crudo. Prosciutto cotto is cooked while prosciutto crudo is not cooked. However you do not need to cook either. Since prosciutto is dry cured, it is safe to eat whether it has been cooked or not.
No matter how you slice it, pizza makes a great date night dinner. Try this upscale prosciutto and arugula pizza next time you are looking to make dinner for two. Let us know what you think by sharing, rating, and commenting below!
Love this recipe? You may also enjoy these specialty pizza recipes:
- Pepperoni pizza with ricotta and hot honey
- Maple bacon jalapeno pizza
- Chicken bacon ranchero pizza
- Spicy sausage and pepper pizza
To browse more of our latest recipes and seasonal dishes, visit our homepage here.
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Prosciutto and Arugula Pizza
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 pound pizza dough store-bought
- ¼ cup flour for dusting
- ⅔ cup pizza sauce
- 8 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
- ¼ pound prosciutto torn into bite-size pieces
- 2 to 3 handfuls baby arugula
- 1 pinch sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
- Lightly dust a clean work surface and your hands with flour. Stretch the dough using both hands, until it is roughly the size of the pizza pan. Use additional flour as necessary to prevent the dough from sticking to your hands or your work surface.Lightly dust the pan with flour and gently lay the stretched pizza dough on it.
- Spoon the pizza sauce onto the dough a little at a time, spreading it around with the back of a spoon. Continue until the dough is covered with a thin layer of sauce, leaving about a half-inch border for the crust.
- Next, sprinkle handfuls of mozzarella cheese onto the pizza. We recommend starting from the edges and working in towards the center, using a lighter hand, and then adding more cheese where needed to fill in the gaps.
- Generously top the pizza with prosciutto, then sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt.
- Bake for about 16 to 18 minutes, or until the crust starts to turn golden and the cheese is bubbly and lightly browned.
- Top the pizza with a few handfuls of baby arugula, then let the pizza cool for at least 2 minutes before slicing.Gently loosen pizza from the pan with a spatula. Then slice, serve, and enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
If you have any questions regarding the information presented in this post, please refer to our Nutrition Disclaimer here.
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