A Mushroom-Goat Cheese Pie for National Pizza Day — or Shabbat Dinner

Image by Jean Hanks

Image by Jean Hanks
Cheesy, comforting, versatile and full of flavor, pizza is a food that’s impossible not to love. And today, February 9, we have even more reason to celebrate it: It’s National Pizza Day!
This year, instead of ordering in, I’m opting for something a little healthier and fresher. I’m going homemade — or at least semi-homemade.
The recipe I used is one I adapted from the cookbook “Gjelina: Cooking From Venice, California.” It’s vegetarian and absolutely delicious. Since making dough from scratch is time-consuming, I decided to pop over to my local pizzeria to buy some of theirs. I much prefer this option to packaged dough from the supermarket. (If you’re feeling more ambitious than I was, Gjelina’s dough recipe is .)
One bite of this incredible pie and you’ll want to make it too… if not for National Pizza Day, then maybe for a fun, modern Shabbat meal.
Pizza With Mushrooms & Truffle-Studded Goat Cheese
The key to this pizza is to use whatever mushrooms look good and fresh at the market. We always have a pie made with just cremini mushrooms that has a bit more of a working-class personality but tastes amazing. This pizza, in contrast, is more upscale. Look for a truffle-studded ash-y goat cheese such as Truffle Tremor by Cypress Grove.
Makes one 10- to 12-inch pizza
Semolina flour for dusting
One 6½-ounce ball Gjelina Pizza Dough, proofed and stretched until 10 to 12 inches in diameter
4 ounces mushrooms, such as cremini or chanterelle, sliced ¼ inch thick if large; small ones halved or left whole
2 tablespoon best-quality olive oil
¼ teaspoon Maldon sea salt
2 ounces truffled goat cheese, such as Truffle Tremor
1½ ounce fontina cheese
¼ teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1) Place a pizza stone on the middle rack of your oven and preheat the oven to the highest possible setting, at least 500° F, for 1 hour. Lightly dust a pizza peel or a rimless baking sheet with semolina flour. Using your forearms or the backs of your hands, transfer the stretched round of dough to the prepared peel.
2) In a small bowl, toss together the mushrooms, olive oil and sea salt. Scatter the mushrooms generously over the dough, almost covering the whole base. Crumble the goat cheese over the mushrooms. With a vegetable peeler, shave the fontina over the top. Be somewhat sparing with the cheese, as it will spread in the oven.
3) Slide the dough onto the pizza stone in the oven and bake, allowing it to bubble up and rise, 4 to 5 minutes. Once the rim starts to look pillowy and airy, using the pizza peel, turn the pizza 180 degrees to ensure that it browns evenly all over. It’s ready when the rim is a deep golden brown and beginning to char, and the bottom of the pizza is crisp, 6 to 8 minutes total.
4) Using the peel or rimless baking sheet, transfer the pizza to a cutting board or a baking sheet with a rim. Scatter the thyme leaves on top. Slice and serve hot.
Recipe reprinted from “Gjelina: Cooking From Venice, California,” by Travis Lett with permission from Chronicle Books.
Jean Hanks is the food intern at the Forward.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.