Prosciutto and Arugula Pizza

Date night pizza dinners don’t have to be out at a fancy restaurant. You can enjoy your favorite specialty pizza and a nice bottle of wine in the comfort of your own home! Prosciutto and arugula pizza is one of the most classic date night pizzas around. With a crispy and savory premium meat combined with a light and fresh leafy green, this pizza will make you feel like you’re out at your favorite Italian restaurant. 

Our prosciutto and arugula pizza is an upscale date-night dish that uses fresh, high-quality ingredients for tons of flavor. And even though it’s a specialty pizza, it’s still easy to make! Store-bought dough and an easy homemade pizza sauce form the base for just three simple toppings: mozzarella cheese, prosciutto, and baby arugula.

Prosciutto And Arugula Flatbread Ingredients

Although the ingredients list is long, we promise this is a simple recipe to make! And if you want to make it even simpler, you can use your favorite store-bought pizza sauce and forgo seasoning the pizza crust. However if you love flavor like us, each ingredient and step is a must!

If you want to make your own pizza sauce at home (which we highly recommend!) Then we have the perfect light and easy sauce for you. To learn more about what you need to make this easy pizza sauce, check out its post here!

The Base:

• Pizza dough
• Flour (for stretching the pizza dough)
• Pizza sauce
• Shredded mozzarella cheese

Toppings:

• Prosciutto
• Baby arugula

The Crust:

• Butter
• Garlic powder
• Onion powder
• Oregano
• Sea salt

How To Make Prosciutto And Arugula Pizza

If you are planning on making our easy homemade pizza sauce, then we suggest making that first, before starting on your pizza! Once that is done, here is how you make our prosciutto and arugula pizza:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Chop the prosciutto into small chunks.
3. Lightly dust a clean work surface and your hands with flour. Stretch the dough using both hands, until it is roughly the size of the pan. Use additional flour as necessary to prevent the dough from sticking to your hands or your work surface.
4. Lightly dust your pan with flour and gently lay your stretched pizza dough on it.
5. Spoon up to 2/3 cup of pizza sauce onto the dough a little at a time, spreading it around with the back of a spoon. Continue until the dough is covered with a thin layer of sauce, leaving about a 1-inch border for the crust.
6. Next, sprinkle handfuls of mozzarella cheese onto the pizza. We recommend starting from the edges and working in towards the center, using a lighter hand, and then adding more cheese where needed to fill in the gaps.
7. Generously top the pizza with prosciutto.
8. Finally, season the crust. Lightly brush the crust with melted butter, then sprinkle with garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, and sea salt.
9. Bake for approximately 16 minutes, or until the crust starts to turn golden and the cheese is bubbly and lightly browned.
10. Top the pizza with a few handfuls of baby arugula and bake for another 2 minutes.
11. Let cool for at least 2 minutes before slicing.
12. Gently loosen pizza from the pan with a spatula. Then slice, serve, and enjoy!

Tips For Making The Perfect Prosciutto Arugula Pizza

• Use a slightly thinner layer of pizza sauce for a tasty, subtle tomato base that doesn’t distract from the bold flavors of the prosciutto and arugula.
• A high-quality prosciutto sliced fresh from the deli packs a ton of salty flavor into this pizza. While store bought packaged prosciutto doesn’t need to be cooked, we enjoy the crispy texture that it gets when put on the pizza before cooking. If you want to keep the chewier consistency of the prosciutto, then you can put it on along with the arugula near the end. 
• Chop the prosciutto up into small chunks for topping the pizza so it gets nice and crispy.
• Brush the crust with butter and seasonings before cooking (our secret trick for adding some extra flavor to store-bought pizza dough!)
• Wait until the end of baking to top the pizza with fresh arugula – then put it back in the oven for another minute or two until the arugula is slightly wilted. If you put the arugula on before baking, it will become too shriveled and lose its fresh flavor.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does prosciutto go on pizza before or after cooking? Either! It just depends on what you want. If you want to keep the chewy texture of the prosciutto, then put it on after cooking. If you want some crispy prosciutto, you can cut it into smaller bits and put it on before cooking. It really just depends on the pizza you are making and what you like! Either way, you can’t go wrong.

Does arugula go on pizza before or after baking? Arugula should either go on after your pizza is done baking, or with about a minute or two left during baking. This makes sure that the arugula wilts slightly, but keeps its fresh flavor and texture. If you were to put arugula on your pizza before baking, it would shrivel and crisp, losing both the texture and flavor that it’s supposed to add.

Does store bought packaged prosciutto need to be cooked? Store bought prosciutto comes in two main types, prosciutto cotto and prosciutto crudo. Prosciutto cotto is cooked while prosciutto crudo is not cooked. However you do not need to cook either. Since prosciutto is dry cured, it is safe to eat whether it has been cooked or not.