Bolognese Pizza

Cook up a bolognese sauce(or use your leftovers), add it to your pizza, and top with delicious melty cheese. This bolognese pizza is seasoned with ground meat, dried herbs, white wine, and tomatoes.The bolognese is great on it’s own but even better using it as leftovers for this delicious pizza.

Can I use bolognese sauce for pizza?

Absolutely! Not only can you, but you should! Bolognese sauce is so flavorful and so it makes a pizza with so much flavor! Many of us make bolognese and pasta on a Sunday to eat with family and then we have leftovers into the week. Just buy a premade pizza dough or make your own, add your sauce and cheese, and enjoy! If you love bolognese sauce, check out my recipe for Gnocchi Bolognese too!

A thick bolognese sauce is such an upgrade from the more traditional marinara sauce you usually see on pizza. And if you are like me, you end up adding some sort of meat as a topping anyway, so this sauce really just saves you a step. Just add cheese!

Meat Sauce Pizza Recipe

This thick and meaty bolognese sauce is an great solution for the popular question of “What’s for dinner”. I love making bolognese on a Sunday to eat with pasta and garlic bread. I always make a lot so that we can have lunches packed for a few days. Sometimes instead of taking the leftovers for lunch we will use some of the sauce to make bolognese pizza instead.

You can use any type of meat in your bolognese but my favorite is a combination of ground Italian sausage and ground beef. If you can find ground sausage, great! If you can’t, you can remove the casing of raw sausage links and ground them in your pot as you cook.

What is Bolognese?

Bolognese is a meat based sauce made popular by Italian cuisine. This sauce originated in the city of Bologna, which is how it got it’s name. In Italy it is usually served with Tagliatelle pasta or used to make Lasagna.

One of the reasons this sauce is so great is because it is slowly cooked. When something cooks slowly, the ingredients have a longer time to meld together and create a delicious flavor. A traditional bolognese sauce does not have much tomato in it. It only has a little bit of tomato paste in addition to white wine and milk.

In the United States we add a lot more tomato sauce into our bolognese, which is actually more similar to the tomato heavy sauces in the south of Italy. My version of bolognese is a combination of traditional Italian bolognese and the American version.

What do you need to make Bolognese Pizza?

• Bolognese Sauce (my homemade recipe)
• Pizza Dough
• Cheese
• Fresh Basil (optional)

How to make Bolognese Pizza

Below are the instructions and ingredients list for a Bolognese Pizza. If you already have leftover bolognese sauce are are only interested in using it for pizza, scroll down to the Pizza Ingredient List and the Pizza Instruction List.

INGREDIENTS  

Bolognese Sauce

• 2 tbsp Salted Butter
• 1 Large Carrot diced
• 1 Celery Stalk diced
• 1 Onion (Small) diced
• 4 cloves Garlic minced
• 16 oz Sweet Italian Sausage (raw) if you cannot find it pre ground then you can buy regular sausage, remove it from the casing, and then ground it.
• 16 oz Ground Beef 85/15 or 90/10
• 1/2 cup White Wine 1/2 cup White Wine Red is ok, but white wine is what is traditionally used to make Bolognese sauce
• 3 tbsp Tomato Paste
• 10 oz Tomato Puree Passata
• 1 cup Beef Broth
• 1/2 cup Whole Milk
• 3/4 tsp Sea Salt
• 1/4 tsp Black Pepper
• 1 Bay Leaf
• 1 pinch Nutmeg

Pizza Dough

• 1 ball Pizza Dough I buy my premade dough at Trader Joes
• 1-2 Cups Bolognese Sauce This depends on how saucy you want your pizza. You don’t want to put on too much sauce because then it will be hard to pick up a slice of pizza once it is cooked.
• 2 cups Shredded Cheese I used about 1.5 cups of shredded mozzarella and 1/2 cup of a sharper pizza cheese to create a nice balance of flavors.
• Toppings Optional

INSTRUCTIONS 

Bolognese Sauce

• Heat the butter on medium heat and add the onion, carrot, and celery. Cook for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally so that it does not burn.
• Add the garlic, italian sausage, salt, pepper, and beef. Cook until the meat is mostly cooked.
• Add the wine and stir. Allow the alcohol to cook out of the wine for about 3-5 minutes. Then, add your tomato paste and stir it in so that it is fully incorporated
• Add your tomato puree, beef broth, bay leaf, pinch of nutmeg and milk. Mix well and allow to simmer on low heat for 2-3 hours.

Pizza

• Bring store bought to room temperature for 30 minutes by removing it from the refrigerator and leaving it on the counter.
• Preheat oven using the instructions on your store bought pizza dough or pizza dough recipe.
• Roll out pizza dough on a smooth surface using a rolling pin. I like to press down on the pizza dough with my hand first to make it flatter. Then I use my rolling pin to roll it out, being careful to change sides so that I can create a circle.
• Add your sauce and topping. Bake for 15 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly!