TJs Onion Pizza

One glob of Trader Joe's Whole Wheat Pizza dough.
One hunk (half a pound?) of aged Gruyere cheese. The more aged the better. The cheese _makes_ this dish so the older and more expensive the better.
Two medium yellow onions, chopped.
One small purple onion, chopped (or half a large purple, or more yellow, white, whatever, the point is that we have enough onions, and "enough" is subjective). A combination of sweet and sharp onions is the best kind of combination.
Three to six cloves garlic, minced.
Some olive oil, I don't know how much, I'm sure you have some. Shut up, it's good for you.
Salt.
Black pepper.
Flour. A handful.
A pizza stone. A frackin' big one.
An oven.

Heat oven with pizza stone at bottom rack at 500 degrees.

Mince garlic. Throw garlic in a small bowl. Add a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Add a teaspoon of salt and a dash or more of freshly ground black pepper. If you want, throw in some hot ground red pepper. Some people call it cayenne but ground Indian red pepper tastes the same to me. A dash of paprika is nice. Doesn't add heat but it adds smoky Spanish character. Which is exactly what you want when you are making this Swiss-Italian pie. Let it sit at room temp and forget about it for now.

Heat a large thick-bottomed pan that has a matching lid at medium heat. NO HOTTER THAN MEDIUM. Medium-low is better. This is a long process. Toss some olive oil in that hot pan, about two tablespoons. Let it heat up. This is medium to medium-low heat by the way. Don't want that oil too hot. When you feel it's ready, or when the olive oil is smokin' (too late) add ALL THE ONIONS. When you think it's hot enough (onions sweating) cover that pan and reduce the heat to very low. Very Low. Cover and don't disturb. Shhh... the onions are sleeping. Really really low heat. Shhh... If they are taking their time in getting hot enough in order to move onto the next step of cooking at low heat, please move onto the other steps. The trick of this particular recipe is to get the onions/oil at medium, then reduce the heat to really really low with the lid on for a long time. Start this step, move on to other steps, then come back to the onions as needed.

Get a large cutting board. Take a handful of flour and throw it as evenly as you can on the cutting board. Open up that Trader Joes dough. Smells nice, right? Wash your hands. Remove your wedding ring. You are about to get up close and personal with this dough. Take the dough in your hands and fold it a couple times. Fun, right? Like kindergarten playdough. Now, throw that frackin' beast on the cutting board and pound it with your fist. Pound it like that sibling you never had but thought you did yet it was just your imagination that Damian was your brother and it was your duty to save the world by pounding the living hell out of his head. Pound for several seconds. Let this demon rest.

No matter what happens after this, check those onions every 10-15 minutes or so. You don't want to open the lid too much. But if those onions are browning too quickly this pizza is going to suck. You want a very slow browning that takes from 45 minutes to one hour. Stirring a little when necessary. If the onions get too liquidy after 45 minutes you should remove the lid to let some of the water evaporate out of there. You want, in a perfect world, at the end, a bunch of onions, slowly browned and caramelized, with not too much liquid which will soggify the pizza. It is quite possible the onions will be done before the dough/crust, or not.

So... the pizza stone is getting hot. The onions are working their way towards carmelization. The garlic/oil infusion is infusing away...

I forgot about the dough! Take that ball of dough in your hand, which you beat into a pulp before letting it rest (very smart of you to let it rest) and grab it by one edge and let gravity pull the rest of it down, but only for a second because you are moving that dough in your hands clockwise or counterclockwise I don't care letting gravity pull that sucker down and down, thinner and thinner, every once and awhile dropping it on that cutting board and POUNDING it just to show it who is boss. Start by pressing at the center and moving outwards, making that dough ever slimmer, but also respecting that dough, knowing that it doesn't want to be thin, its favorite place is one big blob, but you have to show it who is boss, by slamming it down on the counter and pounding it, then picking it up and coaxing it into a nice thin disk-- you have to simultaneously love it and hate it-- love it by coercing it into a nice thin round shape, but hating it by throwing it down and pounding the center of it.

With practice this becomes obvious. Just remember when the dough is especially springy and unresponsive to your pounding, let it rest, and try again in ten minutes.

Reduce heat of the oven to 450 degrees.

Get the dough into a disk shape, roughly, doesn't matter if it's not a circle because this will taste so good, about 12-14 inches. Let that disk rest for a few minutes so it will accept the ingredients we are about to put on it. Toss a bit of corn meal on a pizza paddle (OH! did I forget to mention the pizza paddle!? And the corn meal?) and carefully put your pizza dough on the paddle. Quickly rearrange your pizza dough to the shape you originally wanted, or close to it. Take the garlic/olive oil mixture that you've forgotten about, and spread it all over the dough, with a brush or spoon. Shake the pizza paddle to make sure the pizza is not stuck to the paddle. Then, as best you can, slide it onto the pizza stone, back to front.

Cook for a good five minutes and then get that thing outa there.

Puncture the resulting pizza pimples with a fork and hope no one notices.

Cover the pizza with onions. Take that aged Gruyere cheese and shred it all over that pizza.

Put the pizza back in the oven for another five minutes. Or more if you like it that way.

Drink, eat, and be merry.