For years, pizza has been one of the most popular food items. You've probably enjoyed your own personal favorite toppings many times and only try new things here and there. However, if you find you're getting a little bored with your usual pizza choices or want to try different flavor profiles from around the globe, it can be fun to fire up the oven and bake the following exotic pizza recipes.

Mediterranean Pizza

In the beautiful part of the world that has the Mediterranean Sea, seafood is a main part of the diet. To bake a pizza inspired by the bounty of the sea, you'll first have to choose between a simple garlic-butter sauce or traditional marinara. Then you'll have to use a preferred combination of seafood items; you may want to go with shrimp or crab meat, or you can splurge and go with lobster and scallops. Just remember to cook your seafood choices before putting them atop your pizza. If you like, mozzarella can be added.

Middle Eastern Pizza

With a delicious tahini base instead of marinara, you can begin building a pizza inspired by the Middle East. What you need to add once you've got your crust and tahini is up to you, but to really bring out those Middle Eastern flavors, consider adding fried lamb meat, sun-dried tomatoes, olives and goat cheese and bake it as usual.

Asian Pizza

If you love Japanese or Chinese food, you'll be happy to find you can combine that love with your love for pizza. To create an Asian pizza, start with a pizza crust made of rice instead of wheat. You can choose from a few sauces that will work here and give you different flavors each time you try the pizza; you can make an apricot-pineapple sauce, a peanut sauce or an abalone sauce. You can top the pizza with crayfish, shrimp, onions and enoki mushrooms, but the star of most Asian pizza is the chicken. Before adding chicken to the top of your pizza, combine soy sauce, garlic, mirin, ginger and sriracha to make a sauce. Over a hot stove top, fry the chicken in the sauce you've made. Then put the seasoned chicken on your pizza. You can sprinkle some mozzarella on top if you like.

These recipes can help you start to enjoy pizza in new ways. Look for pizzerias in the city that promote new flavors and ingredients so that you can sample them and recreate them for yourself.