Winter Vegetable and Sausage Pizza

Pizza and flatbreads always make for a delicious dinner and this winter vegetable and sausage pizza is no exception, in fact, it’s an exceptional pizza that should be added to all your holiday menus!

Topped with roasted butternut squash, toasted pumpkin seeds, caramelized onions, smoked Gouda, sausage and then drizzled with browned butter and brown sugar this pizza has the perfect combination of fall and winter flavors with savory and a hint of sweetness and will have you craving it for dinner.

Recently when I got home after some late evening meetings I found I had no groceries – does that ever happen to you? But then I opened my freezer and saw I had some Stonefire Authentic Flatbreads! BOOM! I immediately knew what I was going to be making that was delicious but wouldn’t take me hours to make. Less than half an hour later I had a great tasting pizza.

Stonefire Authentic Flatbreads are truly incredible, they bake to crispy perfection in minutes and really hold up when piled high with delicious toppings. And good thing the crusts hold up, because topping decisions are endless.

With all the crazy business of the upcoming holidays I like having a special pizza/flatbread recipe that is a little fancier than your average red sauce-cheese combination (which is still good, but I want something special over the holidays.) Since pizza is such a universally loved food, it’s really perfect for adding to a holiday menu as an appetizer or main dish.

My in-laws have these awesome pizza parties where there are about 101 toppings and everyone makes different pizzas. At one of the last parties a friend of theirs made this winter vegetable and sausage pizza which was a recreation from a restaurant she had been to. Immediately upon having a slice I went crazy over it, it was so good and honestly I had never had such a cool combination of toppings on a pizza. I mean toasted pumpkin seeds and browned butter and brown sugar (yes, brown sugar!) are not commonly used as pizza toppings so I snapped a picture of it and posted it to my Snapchat story (username: SweetPhi) and got multiple requests for the recipe, so I asked my in-laws’ friend if she’d be willing to share the recipe and make the pizza with me for the blog and she graciously agreed.

When I arrived at her house with the Stonefire crusts we headed to the kitchen and I thought we were going to start cooking all the toppings. Nope, she had made them all ahead of time! Not only was that really sweet of her, but it gave me the best idea for the holidays and making this pizza: make all the toppings ahead of time and have them ready for when last minute guests come over – that way all you have to do is remove the flatbreads from the freezer, top them, bake them and in less than half an hour you have an insanely delicious flatbread!

Winter Vegetable and Sausage Pizza

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Prep Time: 40 minutes

Cook Time: 12 minutes

Total Time: 52 minutes

Servings: 2 pizzas

Ingredients

• 1 cup butternut squash roasted with 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 lb. Italian sausage cooked and broken up into large pieces
• 1 large onion finely sliced and caramelized with 1 teaspoon butter and 1/2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds toasted
• 2 cups smoked gouda shredded
• 2 Stonefire Authentic Flatbreads I used one round pizza crust and one rectangular flatbread crust
• 3 tablespoons butter browned
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar

Instructions

• Roast the butternut squash by baking it at 400 with 1 teaspoon olive oil and sprinkled with a 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper, set aside.
• Brown the sausage by cooking it in a pan over high heat for 20 minutes, breaking it up into large chunks as it cooks. Drain the grease off and set aside.
• Caramelize onion by slicing the onion very finely and then melting butter and olive oil in a pan and then cooking the onions by stirring them around for 20-30 minutes until they become soft and translucent.
• To toast the pumpkin seeds put them in a small frying pan and cook over medium heat until they start to brown, then remove from heat and set aside.
• To brown the butter melt it in a small sauce pan and let it come to a slow boil, then continue cooking it over medium high heat until it starts to form little brown bits at the bottom, then remove from heat.
• Preheat oven to 425. Set two Stonefire pizza crusts on a baking sheet.
• Distribute squash and sausage between the two crusts.
• Next place the caramelized onions over and around the squash and sausage and sprinkle the shredded cheese on top.
• Sprinkle toasted pumpkin seeds on top of the cheese, then drizzle the browned butter on top of the crusts. Lastly sprinkle brown sugar on top of all the toppings. Bake the crusts for 12-15 minutes or until the cheese starts to melt and brown around the edges. Remove from oven, allow to cool for a few minutes, then slice and enjoy!

Disclosure: Stonefire Authentic Flatbreads has compensated me for my time to create this recipes. Thank you for supporting the brands that make the SweetPhi blog possible. As always, all thoughts and opinions are mine alone.