Olive Tapenade Turns Basic Pizza Into A Mediterranean Pantry Win

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Whether you're throwing together a quick French bread pizza, warming up frozen pizza bagel bites, ordering from your favorite chain restaurant, or digging into a homemade deep-dish, one of the best things about pizza is its many delicious options. If you're preparing one from scratch, think beyond the red sauce for your next homemade pizza. One of the most fun swaps for a standard sauce is a briny and satisfying portion of olive tapenade.

Olive tapenade is one of the many delicious alternatives for classic pizza sauce that gives your pie a uniquely Mediterranean feel. You can make your own by blending kalamata olives, capers, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper in a food processor or find a store-bought jar of olive tapenade to use. The meaty texture of the olives, combined with a tangy, zesty flavor, will instantly brighten up your pizza no matter how you use it.

Considering how popular black olives are on pizzas, the use of olive tapenade simply extends the element of olives to include other varieties. With a bold umami flavor reminiscent of Mediterranean dishes, this is definitely worth a try. You can either swap it out in place of regular red sauce, add it as a finishing topping to a freshly baked pie, or consider a combination of both for an olive-rich pizza you're sure to love.

When preparing a five-ingredient olive tapenade recipe, save some to add to your next pizza. This will even work with store-bought or takeout and delivery versions as a simple topping you can add to a hot and fresh slice. For those planning to use the tapenade in place of a typical pizza sauce, it's good to be aware that this will provide a fair amount of salty flavor as the base of your pie. Balance this out with the addition of fresh mozzarella cheese and basil leaves, as well as sundried tomatoes, for a Mediterranean-style margherita pizza.

If tangy and briny is your favorite taste, you can also lean more into the umami flavor profile with other complementary toppings. Anchovies would definitely fit well on your pie, as would any other chopped pieces of your favorite tinned fish. For those who enjoy shawarma, try mixing up a pizza using tapenade as your base with melted mozzarella cheese and chunks of beef or chicken shawarma on top, along with caramelized onions.

There's a lot you can do to lean into the Mediterranean flavors present in an olive tapenade-accented pizza. Crumbles of fresh feta cheese and even a sprinkle of za'atar will round out the texture with some fluffy tenderness and a bit of crunch. Try roasted bell peppers for more sweetness or a drizzle of high-quality olive oil as a finishing ingredient.