Pepperoni, peppers, onions, mushrooms, olives and cheese are all heaped on top of our classic pizza dough for unbeatably hearty slices. While the question of what exactly makes a pizza “supreme” can be debated, an indisputable fact remains: This is one darn good pizza.
The name “supreme pizza” is a less-than-descriptive term. One could argue that supreme pizza has made enough of a name for itself that it doesn’t need to be informative – everyone knows that it’s got mushrooms, peppers, sausage, onions, pepperoni, cheese and tomato sauce. Except… DiGiorno has a version that includes olives, Pizza Hut’s has ground beef, Domino’s uses all of those ingredients but calls it Deluxe and our recipe here forgoes the sausage.
While places started serving supreme pizzas in the early 1960s – Shakey’s, America’s first pizza franchise, served a Portland Supreme with salami and peppers, and an Oklahoma restaurant advertised a supreme pizza covered in meat – things didn’t begin to standardize until Pizza Hut got involved. The Hut’s “Pizza Supreme” debuted in the late 1960s and has stayed much the same since, inspiring pizza makers around the country to add a version to their menus.
Some vegetables are more standard than others – expect to see bell peppers and mushrooms before you encounter spinach and banana peppers – and meats are usually pepperoni, sausage and bacon. While ours is not too far from the classic supremes of the 1960s, we chose to elevate a few ingredients: Taste and texture. We use olives – preferably Castelvetranos, a buttery sweet green olive from Sicily. We also pack in the veggies – roasted peppers, onions and mushrooms – and went for just one meat, pepperoni. As for cheese, we prefer fresh mozzarella, which makes for a lighter pizza, as opposed to a mound of low-moisture mozzarella shreds.
If your idea of supreme pizza looks a little different than ours, we encourage you to experiment. Simply use our roasting instructions below as a guide for other seasonal vegetables, pick up your favorite kind of olive and add in or substitute beef, Canadian bacon, tofu crumbles or sausage for pepperoni.
