Nothing beats the fresh flavors of a familiar Margherita pizza. From-scratch pizza dough is topped with my go-to without a mix pizza sauce, ripe Roma tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and basil.

If I had to pick a single one food item as my food-bff –go with it– it would be pizza.

It’s the one thing I could (do?) eat weekly and never get sick of.

Kitchen-made or carry-out, familiar, pizza lovers or simply cheese… it’s all good with me and because there’s simply so many types of toppings, cheeses and crust variations that it leaves little room for boredom.

I will say the only pizza I don’t like is cold pizza. I’m not sure if it’s a cold sauce and non-melty cheese that puts me off, but I certainly don’t like it. Warm, crispy, gooey and fresh for the win. Every time.

As you could probably guess, I’ve made a lot of pizzas in my life. And if I had a list of my top regular pizzas of all time, the old-school Margherita pizza would be at the top. It’s the go-to of the go-to. How can it not be with fresh toppings like roma tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese and basil leaves. And thanks to the crust for being the vessel in which I can consume it all.

In my pizza loving world, there is only one dough recipe I use. If you’ve bought my book (you rule!) and it’s in the basic chapter. You can also find it here. How many times in one post can I claim something is the dependable? Seriously. We’ve go the dependable pizza dough, the dependable from-scratch pizza sauce and all of those together and topped with cheese will yield one of the go-to pizzas.

#justsayin

After I mixed the dough ingredients together, I split the dough in half and then I placed them into two lightly oiled bowls. Then I covered each bowl with a tea towel and placed them in a warm spot (on top of my dryer with a load going) to rise for 1 hour. Once the dough has risen, punch it down and deflate it a bit.

Preheat your oven to 425℉ (or 220℃).

Then on a clean and lightly floured surface, stretch and shape each pizza.

Transfer dough onto an inverted metal baking sheet that has been brushed with a little oil. This will help the dough to crisp and brown while not sticking.

Then spoon a desired amount of sauce onto the pizza and spread. Because we’re adding sliced tomatoes, I like to spread a thin layer and not over-sauce it.

Lay slices of roma tomatoes over of the sauce. I find slicing fresh mozzarella a burden, so I bought ciliegine mozzarella and simply cut them in half and scattered those overtop as well.

Then I slid the whole pan into my 425° oven and baked it for about 16 to 18 minutes.

Last, but surely not least, scatter fresh basil leaves over top.

Slice…

And serve.

If you like caprese flavors, straightforward to crave the Margherita pizza.