Pepperoni Florentine Pizza - The Recipe Rebel (2024)

Can I just let the pictures do the talking on this one?

Pepperoni Florentine Pizza

This comes back to my issue with naming recipes. I had this crazy idea to make a pepperoni pizza with a spinach-pesto-alfredo sauce and tomatoes. It was awesome! But now what do I call it? Pepperoni pizza with Spinach Pesto Alfredo sauce? Isn’t that too long? Spinach Pesto Pepperoni Tomato Alfredo Pizza? Too awkward.

So, around here, if you order something deemed as Florentine, you’ll typically get spinach, tomato and mozzarella cheese. I figured this was the easiest way I knew to shorten up the title of my pizza and still give you an idea what it’s all about.

I know here we are eating “Italian food” and in Italy they eat real Italian food, but I’ve been to Italy, and to Florence, so I feel like I can call my pizza whatever I want. My apologies to any real Italians out there.

On the other hand, I did my research and apparently “Florentine” in cooking means with spinach, so it’s technically not wrong, it just might not carry all the weight I wanted it to.

How was that for a tangent?

I apologize for feeling like I need to explain to you how I came up with every recipe title.

So this pizza.

Oh. My. Word.

I had been wanting to get a little crazier with my pizza combinations, and I thought this was a good place to start. I bought a whole stick of pepperoni from the grocery store and sliced it in my food processor.

I was going to stick with just the pepperoni and the spinach pesto alfredo sauce, but I opened my fridge and there was half a can of diced tomatoes I’d been itching to get rid of. Perfect. Just like a Manitoban Florentine.

The creaminess of this sauce is such an awesome contrast to the spiciness of the pepperoni. And the tomatoes add a nice juicy bite and keep the texture interesting.

I’m just kind of obsessed with the combination of flavours and textures in this pizza — the spice, the cheese, the herbs, the fruity tomatoes…. Incredible.

Find my whole wheat pizza dough recipe here.
Find my Pesto Spinach Alfredo Sauce recipe here.