I'm the same way. I love mushrooms, onion, bell peppers (red & green), and black olives. Pepperoni adds a ice flavor, but I don't like my pizzas smothered with meat. I have a small pizza cookbook, and if I recall correctly, lots of authentic pizzas do not have tomato sauce or even cheese...crust the crust,olive oil and scant toppings.
I like a lot of veggies, too. My favorite meat on a pizza is Italian sausage. I also love a "white" pizza with spinach and goat cheese.
I will try anything on a pizza. My favorite is mushroom, sausage, onion and black olives. But I am game.
I always make 2 pizzas: -Regular tomato sauce based with veggies/meat/cheese -A white pizza with garlic-infused olive oil and Fontina cheese I came across a great Dutch Fontina cheese at Food Lion that was so high fat it bubbled like lava when you baked it. OMG, it was so good!!! I could not find it next time I made pizza. Apparently it was something that was found in the corner of the warehouse and they pushed it out to the store to move it...it was not a stocked item. One-time-only.
Nope. I love pineapple, but not on a pizza. You may as well add spaghetti sauce to ice cream or put mayonnaise in your coffee. Some things are just not meant to be together. Oh, and yeah, I've actually tried it (pineapple on pizza, not the other examples). As for fish, that needs to stay off of my pizza too.
I used to make a pasta dish that I got from Giada DeLaurentiis. It was made with fontina and was so good. I haven't even thought of that in years; now I need to dig up that recipe.
So I drug out the small Italian cookbook I bought in the mid 70s and looked up the (3) pizza recipes in it. One of the recipes is for a calzone. The other (2) are pizzas that do not have tomato sauce...you chop up tomatoes and arrange them on top of the dough, which has been brushed with olive oil. Both are topped with mozzarella. The author claims to have spent time in Italy working with chefs in (4) restaurants: (2) in Venice, (1) in Rome and (1) in Florence. I gotta type out the ingredients here because I've never encountered (nor made) anything like these. Pizza #1 (Venetian) -Olive oil -Chopped tomato -Italian sausage -Capers -Basil -Steamed, shelled mussels -Mozzarella Pizza #2 (region unknown) -Olive oil -Chopped tomato -Green onions -Green pepper -Tiny shrimp -Minced salami -Oregano -Mozzarella -Quartered hard boiled eggs (a garnish placed in the center of the cooked pizza)
I've had Hawaiian pizza with pineapple and ham once and it wasn't half bad. I've never ordered it again though. Guess I'm just used to Italian style. No anchovies, or fish of any kind, or olives for me. But I love to load it up with Italian sausage, mushrooms, green or banana peppers, and a little onion. I've also had a white pizza once. I think it was made with some sort of white sauce like a parmesan sauce instead of red. It was okay, but I've never ordered that again either.
The white pizza I've had (and make) that's very good is nothing more than sweet Fontina cheese... not some white version of tomato sauce. I spice mine up a bit by warming minced garlic in a small fry pan with olive oil, brushing the crust with the garlic-flavored oil, sprinkling on Italian spices, sprinkling on the sauteed minced garlic, then topping with the Fontina cheese.