Pear Walnut Blue Cheese Sage Pizza

This is gooooood. I'm learning that most things with blue cheese are goooood. We're gonna go through this step by step. It'll be fun. That's right. I've gone Pioneer Woman on you. You'll just have to humor me. I'm having a lot of fun with my camera right now. And a lot of fun trying new recipes. Put those two together and I'm a recipe blogging fool. Pizza (or pizza derivatives like calzones, oh yeah, calzones, sista) is a weekly event in our house. We're not picky. We like take out, take & bake, frozen or homemade. This one is a sweet, crunchy, chewy homemade little number. First you need to make pizza dough. I use a whole wheat breadmaker recipe from The Bread Bible.

Then you'll need to thinly slice up some pears, Bosc or D'Anjou.

Chop up some onion.

Crack the whip on your helpers (or ask them politely) to go pick some sage leaves.

5 or 6 leaves is good. Sliver them up and drop them into some extra virgin olive oil.

After the sagey goodness has infused itself into the olive oil, take out the sage and use the oil to cook the onions. I love my Pampered Chef bamboo.

Let the onions get nice and caramelized. Look how nice and golden they're getting. Oops, things are steaming up.

There, that's better. Toast some chopped up walnuts in the oven. 350 for a few minutes. Back to the dough. Sprinkle some all purpose flour on a flat surface. (What? What's that you say? My labeling's a little enthusiastic? Check out my pantry.) Ahhhh. Organization is like a drug. I swear it: if you ever get your hands on a label maker, it will change your life forever. Anyway, back to business. Roll out the pizza dough.

Place it and/or pat it into a cornmeal lined jelly roll pan or cookie sheet. Bake the crust for 10 min at 500 degrees. At this point, you may need to stop and scold your help for trying to eat all the pears. After the pizza crust has cooled a bit, get some balsamic vinegar from your pantry.

My secret's out. I love balsamic vinegar. Again, as you can see, we're not picky. I like cheap (Kirkland) and I like snooty (Sparrow Lane). They're all so divine! Sometimes I think I could drink it. But it's much better soaked up into some crusty bread. Hooo.

Now stop what you're doing and say goodnight to your equally divine 8 month old son. 'Night Bex! Drizzle some of that divinity onto the dough (and ponder how you ever got so lucky to be a mom of 3 such darling children--or you can ponder whatever you see fit).

Brush it around.

Have your help layer the onions on next.

Then the pears.

Then the blue cheese. Yes, it's okay if your help is still wearing pajamas. Yes, I know we're making dinner and the girl should have been in regular clothes by now. Give me a break, I've got things to do. Like blog, for pete's sake.

Now the toasty little walnuts.

Sprinkle on a bit of nutmeg. Perfect. Bake it for 10-15 min at 350 degrees. As a finishing touch, add the sage pieces that were soaking in oil earlier. THEN EAT! YAY!

If you try it, let me know how you liked it!