The beauty of brunch pizzas is that they’re as versatile and interesting as brunch itself. From French toast to chicken and waffles, if you’ve seen it on an early morning diner menu, we’ve tried it on a pizza. For this particular ode to breakfast, Canadian bacon, cipollini onions and Gruyère top a pizza with an egg cracked in the center and cooked just right: firm whites and a delightfully runny yolk.
When dreaming up a pie that could serve as either a weekend treat or a special event showstopper — Mother's Day, for example — we wanted something both rich and delicate in flavor. The dairy components we chose are decadent, yet interesting and balanced: a base of tangy crème fraîche, sharp Gruyère, and mild mozzarella. And we didn’t skimp on the alliums. Oven-roasted cipollini onions (small, white Italian onions ideal for caramelization) provide sweetness, and a post-bake sprinkling of chives add hints of herbal flavor.
Cooking an egg on pizza can present some challenges. As pizza maker Anthony Falco wrote in his book Pizza Czar, toppings can pierce the yolk, the egg can slide out of place while transporting the pie to the oven, and launching can result in the egg racing right off and onto the oven floor. So if you’ve never topped a pizza with egg before and you’re making this for someone special, you may want to try it at least once, following our tips, before you serve it up for real.
To make this pizza successfully every time, we create a well of cheese in the center of the pizza and crack our egg directly into it. From there, we carefully launch the pizza into the oven. If our egg whites aren’t cooking as quickly as the pizza, we use a fork to gently spread them out and help them firm up in time to finish with the other toppings and crust. The result is that the lower third of each slice gets a drip of yolky sunshine. A few other pro tips: Poached egg added post bake or a well-distributed smattering of quail eggs would also work well here.
