Making Arugula Pizza - Napoletana Style!

Arugula pizza is a specialty of the Campania region of Italy. There you can order the delightfully thin crust pizza with buffalo mozzarella, fresh red tomatoes, and heaps of spicy arugula (fondly known as "rocket" to many who love its sharp and spicy taste) piled on top. In Naples, the brick pizza ovens get so hot that pizza need only be baked for a few minutes to perfection. When you make arugula pizza at home, you'll have to bake yours for much longer in order to get the well-done crispy taste that replicates genuine Napoletana (or from Naples, Italy) pizza.

The secret to making arugula pizza is not to bake the pizza with the fresh arugula on top-- this will only burn the arugula making it taste bad. Instead, after the pizza has been baked and removed from the oven, you'll toss arugula on top and it will wilt from the heat. Don't worry if it seems like the recipe calls for a lot of arugula-- it will wilt down to a much smaller amount!

What You Need

• 1 pizza dough (make your own if you're feeling adventurous)

• 5 ounces fresh mozzarella (don't get the ciliegine mozzarella, but the slightly harder fresh mozzarella that usually comes in a large ball)

• 3 ripe tomatoes

• 4 cups arugula

• oregano, salt, pepper

• olive oil

How to Prepare

1. First you'll want to pre-heat your oven to about 500 degrees. If you own a pizza stone, all the better, but it isn't mandatory to make great pizza.

2. Roll/stretch out the pizza dough onto a greased baking sheet (or if you're using a pizza peel, add cornmeal to the bottom of the rolled dough). You'll want to stretch the dough out as thin as possible without tearing it.

3. Place slices of tomatoes and fresh mozzarella on the surface of the dough.

4. Sprinkle oregano, salt, and pepper to taste.

5. Pour a small amount of olive oil over the pizza.

6. Bake for about 12 minutes, or until the crust has slightly browned and the cheese is melted.

7. Remove from oven and place handfuls of arugula on top of the hot pizza.

8. Cool for 8 minutes, slice, and enjoy!