This super simple and delicious flatbread recipe from Ooni ambassador Bryan Ford combines tangy sourdough with classic middle eastern herbs. Topped with Za’atar and olive oil, these simple breads can be enjoyed plain or with any combination of toppings.

When it comes to indulgent treats, Ooni ambassador Oli Mannion (@imtheonewhocooks) does not disappoint. An oozing chocolate calzone stuffed with Creme Egg, Mini Egg, and Mascarpone? Yes please. Make sure your chocolate is pre-chilled to obtain the perfect ratio of bite to ooze.

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, bacon, cipollini onions and Gruyère top a pizza with an egg cracked in the centre 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 flavour. 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 caramelisation) provide sweetness, and a post-bake sprinkling of chives add hints of herbal flavour.

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.

Hot cross buns have been a Christian Easter tradition in the UK for centuries, enjoyed as a way to end Lent. The distinctive cross on top symbolizes the cross on which Jesus died; sources even claim that a sweet, fruit-filled bun was first marked with a cross all the way back in the 12th century — and by a monk, no less. Talk about staying power!

But even longtime favorites need an update every once in a while. Cornwall-based recipe developer, sourdough bread baker, pizzaiolo and filmmaker Grant Batty experimented tirelessly to develop a recipe that combined the hot cross bun with two other great tear-and-shares, the positively modern Chelsea bun (modern, that is, when compared with the almost thousand-year-old hot cross bun), and the better-known cinnamon roll.

For the uninitiated, both hot cross buns and Chelsea buns are traditional, celebratory affairs made with enriched dough (yeasted dough that contains fat and/or dairy ). They’re both filled with dried fruit, like currants, raisins or candied citrus. And they’re both spiced, usually with Mixed Spice — cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice — which to those on the other side of the pond, is essentially pumpkin spice minus the ginger and cloves. Hot cross buns get marked with a cross, whereas Chelsea buns, created in 1800s London and a favorite of the royal family, are filled and rolled into a spiral, then finished with apricot jam. Cinnamon rolls, to close the loop, while also enriched and coiled, contain no fruit, are spiced only with cinnamon, and instead of being glazed, get iced or frosted.

Taking cues from all three sweet recipes, these Hot Cross Chelsea Buns begin with an enriched dough that gets filled with cinnamon, lemon, and dried fruit, marked with a flour-and-water cross, and set to bake for 20 minutes. Then, this already remixed sweet treat gets another layer of fusion with cinnamon-roll inspired cream cheese frosting applied post-bake and left to melt ever so slightly into the warm rolls.

Marinated in rosemary, mint and thyme, and served with a minty yogurt sauce, these flame-roasted lamb chops make a great centerpiece for any special occasion. Peppers, carrots, bush beans and potatoes — all grilled on a cast-iron grizzler — round out this dish from German food blogger and digital creator Claudia Kratz of Recipe Love (@rezept_liebe).

This recipe looks impressive on a dinner table (especially at Easter), but it’s deceptively easy. Lamb chops marinate with herbs, sea salt, olive oil, and lemon juice for an hour in the refrigerator; minty yogurt dip comes together in minutes, and par-baked vegetables only cook for about fifteen minutes. While it’s no thirty-minute meal, this showstopper is simple to make.

When it comes to the ingredients, it’s also accessible, relying mostly on seasonal vegetables — like bush beans and pointed peppers — and meat. Other ingredients, like yogurt, lemon juice and baby carrots, are easy to find all year round.

The non-negotiables? High-quality lamb and fresh herbs. A great lamb chop starts at the butcher’s shop, and a stellar marinade and dipping sauce both begin with excellent herbs.

Why not try this out at your Easter celebration or a spring dinner party?

Torta Pasqualina, a savory double-crusted pie filled with greens, artichokes and hard boiled eggs, originated in Genoa in the 1500s, but has become a tradition across Italy in the years since its creation. Our spinach-based recipe comes from Calabrian food blogging duo Cristina Bruno and Giuliano Bronzi of Vuoi Assaggiare.

Given that it’s typically served at Easter, the pie is rich with Christian symbolism. It was originally made with 33 sheets of puff pastry to represent each year of Jesus’s life. (That said, it doesn’t have to have dozens of layers of crust to be delicious and nowadays, it’s often made with fewer.) Cristina and Giuliano‘s pie uses a laminated rough puff pastry as the base, for a slice that’s flaky and buttery and less time intensive than traditional puff pastry. Looking for even more of a shortcut? Use puff pastry found in the frozen section of your supermarket.

The filling – greens, artichokes, eggs and cheese–also carries meaning. The eggs that feature so prominently stand for fertility, and being born again, the way Christ was said to be. Artichokes, once considered vegetables befitting the nobility, are in this way luxurious enough to make the cut for an Easter feast.

As beautiful as it is delicious, when you slice into this pie, you’ll reveal a hard boiled egg surrounded by the brilliant green of spinach and artichokes. Want to make sure each slice is a stunner? To know where best to reveal your eggs, lightly score the top of your pastry with a butter knife before baking.

Notes: If you’d prefer to use store-bought pastry instead of making your own, look for sheets of frozen puff pastry at your local grocery store.

Sticky toffee pudding is a quintessential British dessert. The people’s pudding. Simultaneously pub grub and a Michelin-star favourite that doesn’t discriminate. It’s sweet, gooey, and devilishly moreish.

The dessert’s origins are just as complex and murky as its lavish toffee sauce, but not as ancient as you might think. The place most associated with it is probably the tiny village of Cartmel in Cumbria, which champions the dessert, branding itself “The Home of Sticky Toffee Pudding,” but the townspeople don’t claim to have invented it. For that, Cumbria-based food writer Tess Baxter points to Francis Coulson of the Lake District’s Sharrow Bay Hotel, who published the supposed original recipe in the 1970s and coined it “icky sticky toffee pudding.”

A whole other claim (from Canada) suggests it was a maple syrup recipe from a pair of Canadian pilots (or a handwritten recipe from a solo aviator) that inspired Mr. Coulson’s sticky toffee sauce..

However it started, there’s no disputing its reputation as an end-of-meal closer worthy of a place in the culinary Hall of Fame. This is a dessert that sends everyone away from the table happy. That’s why we asked our Cornwall-based recipe developer Grant Batty (@grantbatty) to create an easy, delicious version that can be made in an Ooni pizza oven. His is a classic, no-nonsense, low-and-slow approach that’s easy to follow. Due to the low temperature it requires, this is a great way to use your oven as it cools down after a pizza-making session. As per tradition, dates are the featured ingredient, used to moisten and enrich the sponge with flavour without making it dense and heavy. Grant recommends serving the pudding warm, drowning in toffee sauce, and accompanied with a generous dollop of fresh clotted cream.

Watch the accompanying video for Grant’s step-by-step instructions.

Notes: this recipe is best suited for wood and charcoal cooking. To create the low temperature required to bake the pudding, it’s advised to use a charcoal bed and low flame. If you’re cooking with gas, preheat the oven on the lowest setting, then turn off the gas when you place the pudding inside and use the residual heat to cook it. Be sure to check the temperature first to ensure the oven isn’t too hot. If the temperature drops much below the recommended 320°F (160°C) , return the flame to low and position the dish at the mouth of the oven.

TIME 1 hour total

YIELD Serves 6 as a dessert

Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad of The Ottolenghi Test Kitchen (OTK), came up with this baked polenta dish that’s covered in creamy béchamel, feta, oregano and za’atar tomatoes, for their latest cookbook, Extra Good Things. For the uninitiated, North London-based OTK, was founded by Yotam, a New York Times best-selling cookbook author,  weekly columnist for The Guardian and owner of several restaurants. 

This dish is rich in flavour and low in gluten, making it a tasty alternative for those who can’t stomach traditional pies. Not everybody agrees on that distinction, however, “It’s not a pizza,” insisted Noor, the Bahraini-born chef and lead member of OTK, when talking with colleagues about this dish. 

While we agree with Noor, we also understand the impulse to call it a pizza — it’s covered in sumptuous toppings,  comes out of the oven with a crackly edge and has a delightfully cheesy middle. The pizza went through several names at OTK, like polenta-pizza, polizza and polenta not-a-pizza. Whatever you want to call it, it’s packed with herbal flavour from generous sprinklings of oregano and za’atar (a Middle Eastern spice mixture that includes thyme, marjoram, sumac and toasted sesame seeds). It also uses a béchamel that starts with a roux, which calls for a bit of flour. To make this pie fully gluten-free, swap gluten-free flour for all-purpose flour. The folks at OTK like to make their za’atar-baked tomatoes with the datterini variety — small Italian fruits whose name means “little dates” due to their sweetness — but cherry tomatoes work just as well. We love how quickly these cook in an Ooni, going from raw to juicy and bursting in under 5 minutes, as compared to 45 minutes in a conventional oven.

To keep this recipe fairly easy, it calls for quick-cook polenta, so make sure to check the label. While using regular polenta won’t ruin your meal, it will add an additional 30 minutes to your cook time. 

When using an Ooni, keep in mind that this recipe works best in a 16-inch gas-powered oven like Ooni Karu 16 or Ooni Koda 16. If you’d like to use a 12-inch oven, you can halve the polenta or make two batches on quarter-sheet pans. If you’re using a wood-powered oven, be sure to keep a close eye on the fire to maintain the temperature, so the polenta doesn’t burn. 

Just in time for spring and Easter, the Pastiera Napoletana – a traditional Neapolitan cake – is a classic found throughout the Campania region of Italy. It’s a dream come true for both carb-lovers and those with a sweet tooth. We turned to Italian-born, Augsburg, Germany-based Ooni Ambassador, Vincenzo Viscusi (aka @vincenzoviscusi), for his take on the famed dessert.

Neapolitans traditionally prepared this cake in the week leading up to Easter (to allow all the ingredients’ flavors to develop). But it’s so popular today, that pastry shops and restaurants in Naples now sell it year-round. 

The Pastiera Napoletana is known for its shortcrust pastry base and creamy filling made with grano cotto (an Italian cooked-wheat product – more on that in the note below) and ricotta scented with lemon zest, orange blossom, vanilla and cinnamon. For an extra dose of sweetness, you can also add candied fruit. 

Who first created this Easter dessert is a bit of a mystery. Legend has it that it was a mermaid named Partenope. During one spring stay in the Gulf of Naples, the Neapolitan citizens brought him the ingredients of the cake as a gift. Partenope, in turn, took them to the gods, and the dessert was born. If you’re not one for mythology, the dish may be from the 18th or early 19th century, when sugar became more available and Swiss immigrants, who loved their sweet dishes, started to make homes in Naples. 

Whoever invented the Pastiera, we’re very happy they did. It’s a tad time-consuming, but the dessert is well worth it. 

Casatiello is a traditional Neapolitan bread that’s prepared at Easter to celebrate the end of Lent. It’s a bread heavy with meaning—the halo of hard-boiled eggs and crosses on top of the bread represent new life and recall the biblical Passion of Jesus. But with its stuffing of cheeses and cured meats, Casatiello is also a rich, delicious addition to any Easter celebration.

The salty and lard-based Casatiello uses a dough that’s the ideal vehicle for meats and cheeses. Traditionally, Neapolitans stuff this bread with ciccioli, a native creation that’s a cross between cracklins and lard, but if you can’t find that, you can also substitute pancetta or guanciale. While you could swap butter for lard, the texture and taste of your dough won’t be the same. Look for lard in your supermarket’s baking or dry goods section, or you can also ask your butcher if you can’t find a shelf-stable variety. 

It may seem strange to add hard-boiled eggs to the bread with their shell still on, but they make for a dramatic presentation when cut into. To eat, take the egg out of its little bread cage and remove the shell; shell removal can be done either before or after cutting the loaf into slices. 

Pizza Chiena, or “stuffed pizza,” may be from Campania, but it is much more similar to a Chicago deep dish than a classic Neapolitan-style pizza. This cold cut, cheese and egg-filled pizza has a top and bottom crust and it’s cooked in a deep springform pan, so slices are thick, hearty and filled to the brim with meat and cheese. 

Traditionally, people from the Campanian region of Italy eat stuffed pizza during the Easter period, but it’s delicious all year round. This filled dish is best prepared the day before so it has a full 24 hours to cool completely and let the flavours meld. 

Because Pizza Chiena keeps so well, it’s often made on Good Friday and eaten throughout the entire Easter weekend. We think it’s great no matter when you make it. While Vincenzo’s recipe relies on the traditional meats and cheeses from Campania—capicola, Neapolitan salami, provolone—this dish works well with any bits and bobs you’ve got in your fridge. For example, mortadella, swiss and other salamis would all work here.