Pizza at Home - Maple Syrup Pizza with Couture Farms Maple Syrup

Mmm, I know this Sunday pizza day is going to be a good one. With the ingredients I'm picking today, I don't see how it couldn't be. 

It's Sunday and while our RV is parked in New Hampshire, we've taken multiple trips across the state line into Vermont, so I think it's totally fair that I should do a pizza tribute to the state of Vermont. 

Now if there's one delicious food I love from Vermont, it has to be their Maple Syrup. And the best Maple Syrup both Theresa and I have had has come from Couture's Maple Shop in Westfield Vermont. I will have a whole write-up coming for them in the coming weeks. And there's no added fillers or corn syrup here. This is Pure Vermont Maple Syrup, directly from the Maple Trees on the Couture Farm. 

Because the focus of today's pizza is maple, I'm going to incorporate it wherever it's practical. 

You can find more about Couture's Maple Shop and Bed and Breakfast at www.maplesyrupvermont.com, and order their maple syrup and have it shipped to your door!

There's 4 different grades of maple syrup, ranging from Golden (delicate flavor and light color), Amber (rich flavor and light amber color), Dark (robust flavor and dark amber color), and Very Dark (strong flavor and darkest color). 

Because I want the maple to stand out I'm going to use the Very Dark syrup. 

I made my regular pizza dough recipe, but instead of using sugar, I am using maple syrup. I looked up the substitution guide and settled on a 1:1 swap. Normally this amount of dough would get 1 Tbs of sugar, so instead it's getting 1 Tbs of maple syrup. 

Sweet and Savory delicious to me, so to go on top of my Maple themed pizza, I'm putting a salty bacon. I chose a thick-cut bacon and cut them into 1 inch pieces. Once they had cooked, but not gotten crispy, I drained the bacon grease and added more Very Dark Maple Syrup. 

One other flavor that Theresa and I always enjoy are caramelized onions. I sliced 5 whole sweet onions. 

Which turned into this in a pan. 

But it's certainly a labor of love. Over two hours later, with stirring every few minutes, this is the final result. These take a while, but they're very delicious. 

After I pressed out my dough into a pizza shape, I skipped the tomato sauce and just drizzled maple syrup onto it. 

That was topped with Sharp Vermont Cheddar and my caramelized onions. I was trying to decide how many onions to add. I do want the flavor, but I don't want it to overpower everything else. If Theresa had her way, this would be a caramelized onion jam pizza. Maybe that'll be a future idea. For now, I did a light sprinkling. 

And then I added my maple bacon pieces. Oh yeah, this is going to be tasty. 

Everything cooked up like normal. Around 12 minutes at 480F in a convection bake oven. Once it was done, I gave another drizzle of maple syrup on top. 

To me, that is a good looking pizza. 

To Ian, this is a good looking pizza. I made him a whole pepperoni pizza with the entire top covered in pepperonis.  

My first plate. I'd ended up having a few more slices of the maple, bacon, caramelized onion pizza. 

If you're a maple fan, this is something that's definitely worth trying. The sweet maple flavor of the syrup really comes through. The saltiness of the bacon is a perfect accompaniment to it. Add in the caramelized onion to give it a more complex flavor and you've got a pizza that I'd gladly make again!