There's pizza in them there scones.

I’m not sure that’s it’s completely socially acceptable to eat pizza for breakfast. I mean… I do it. You do it. Everyone does it, but if you saw someone walking down the street at 8AM with a slice of pepperoni, you might think, “Wow. That person needs help.” Or you might just be jealous.

But did you know you can have your pizza and maintain all semblances of a normal social creature? All you have to do is hide the pizza a bit.

You see, if people see you walking down the street with a lovely, flakey homemade scone they will immediately think, “That person has their act together!” People who eat scones get raises and are almost always dateable. Scones mean you have it going on.

In reality though, you’re just eating pizza. Buttery, flakey pizza.

Pizza Scones

Yield: 8 large scones

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

2 Cups all-purpose flour
1/2 Cup cornmeal
1 Tablespoon baking powder
2 Tablespoons fresh basil, minced
1 Teaspoon dried oregano
1 Large pinch of salt
1/2 Cup sun-dried tomatoes, minced
1 Cup mozzarella cheese, grated
1/2 Cup pepperoni, minced (opt.)
1/2 Cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cubed
2 Eggs
3/4 Cups buttermilk

Helpful Equipment:
Biscuit Cutters

Directions:

1) Mix flour, cornmeal, baking powder, fresh basil, and oregano in a large bowl.

2) Mix mozzarella cheese, minced sun-dried tomatoes, and pepperoni in a separate bowl. If you're using dried sun-dried tomatoes, reconstitute them in boiling water for 30 seconds before using. If you're using tomatoes in oil, you can just add them in.

3) Cube butter and cut it into the flour mixture using your fingers until it resembles pea-sized pieces.

4) Stir mozzarella mixture into flour mixture.

5) In a separate bowl, mix together buttermilk and eggs and then stir that into the flour mixture. Mix until it forms a loose dough.

6) Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead a few times. The dough should be about 3/4-1 inch thick.

7) Cut out 8 large scones from the dough. You may need to re-roll the dough. Add cut scones to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

8) Bake scones in a preheated 375 degree oven for 20-25 minutes until they are golden brown. Let cool briefly before serving.

Adapted from a Family Fun recipe.

The Scone Base

This is a really standard scone base except for a few add-ins that give the scones a bit of pizza flare. Namely, cornmeal, fresh basil, and oregano.

Scone basics!

Mix all this together with some baking powder, salt, and flour and your dry ingredients are pretty much ready to go.

The basil is key.

As with any scone worth its flakes, these guys have a fair amount of butter in them. I’m sure they exist, but it’s pretty hard to make a great scone without butter.

So cube up some cold butter and add it to your dry ingredients.

Gotta have butter in scones.

I find that it’s easiest to just use my fingers to mash up the butter with the dry stuff until it’s in pea-sized bits. It should resemble a really coarse meal basically.

Bring on the pizza!

Now that we have a scone base, we need to add in some good pizza flavors. I did some mozzarella, pepperoni, and sun-dried tomatoes. Honestly, I think the sun-dried tomatoes are the most important part. They really give the scones a classic pizza taste. If you’re using sun-dried tomatoes in oil, you can just dice them up, but if you’re using dried, be sure to reconstitute them in boiling water for 30 seconds or so.

The real pizza flavors.

Mix these pizza toppings straight in with your scone base. This bowl will already be smelling good.

This already smelled good.

As a final step, mix in your eggs and buttermilk to the dry ingredients. This will bring your scone dough together.

Nice action shot.

Shaping and Baking

Once your buttermilk and eggs are mixed in, try not to over-mix the dough. Just mix it enough to pull everything together and then turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface.

Knead the dough a few times and then use a biscuit cutter to start popping out large rounds. As an alternative, you could make a large circle with your dough and then slice it up into triangles.

This would, of course, look like pizza!

I went with rounds though.

Big scones.

Lay these guys out as you make them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. You should get about 8 large scones out of a batch and you’ll probably need to re-roll your dough once to get full use of it.

These are huge.

Pop these guys in a 375 degree oven for about 20-25 minutes until the scones are lightly browned and flakey.

This might be no surprise to you, but your kitchen will smell like pizza while making these. Exactly like pizza.

Like a pizza pie.

You’ll want to let these cool for a few minutes, but you want to eat them while warm also.

I was pretty happy with these guys after my first big bite.

CHOMP!

So, fool all those people who you encounter on any given day. They will think you’re high class and sophisticated. Heck. They might even think your British!

But, really, you’re just a pizza sneak.

The half and half!

I’m headed out of town for almost a week for a work function and anytime I go out of town Betsy asks me to make her some frozen meals or else she threatens that she will do nothing but eat at McDonald’s everyday. I think this is mostly an empty threat, but I usually just play it safe and make her some frozen things to eat while I’m gone.

Normally, this is burritos because she’s a Tex-Mex kinda gal. But when I mentioned burritos this time around she had an even better idea! She said that I should try to figure out how to make frozen personal pizzas like you can buy at the store.

Challenge accepted!

I asked for toppings ideas in last week’s poll and you guys answered with artichokes and pepperoni. Easy enough!

Frozen Personal Pizzas

Yield: 12 personal pizzas

Prep Time: 30 minutes + dough time

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients:

Dough: (Adapted from American Pie)
If you're using a mixer, it's a good idea to do this in two batches.
10 Cups (45 ounces) bread flour
3 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons kosher salt (or 4 Teaspoons normal salt)
1 Tablespoon instant yeast
6 Tablespoons olive oil
3 1/2 Cups room-temp water (70 degrees F)

Sauce: (Adjust to your liking)
1 28 ounce can whole tomatoes
1 Tablespoon dried parsley
1/2 Tablespoon dried marjoram
2 Teaspoons garlic powder
2 Teaspoons onion powder
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon sugar (optional)
1 Teaspoon vinegar (optional)
Salt and pepper

Toppings:
2 pounds of mozzarella cheese (a bit over 2 ounces per pizza)
Various other toppings like canned artichokes (sliced), pepperoni, mushrooms, peppers, bbq chicken, etc.

Helpful Equipment:
Pizza Stone
Pizza Peel
Digital Scale

Directions:

1) To make the dough it's best to split it into two batches, especially if you're using a mixer. Add all the ingredients except flour to a large bowl or the bowl of a mixer. Stir and let sit for 5 minutes until yeast foams. Add flour and mix until it comes together.

2) If you're using a mixer, mix on low with the dough hook until the dough forms a course ball, about 4 minutes. Let it rest for a few minutes, then continue to mix for another 5 minutes on medium-low.

If you're mixing by hand, dip a hand or a spoon into a bowl of luke warm water and mix vigorously until it forms a soft ball. Whether you're mixing by hand or by mixer, the dough should be soft but not really sticky and it should pass the windowpane test.

3) Divide the dough into 6 ounce balls and put them in oiled plastic bags. Let sit at room temperature for 15 minutes, then store in the fridge overnight. Be sure to let the dough come to room temperature before using.

4) To make the sauce, blend all ingredients until smooth.

5) To make pizza, roll out dough to an 8 inch pizza, sauce lightly.

6) Preheat the oven to 450 degrees with a pizza stone if you have one.

7) Slide formed pizza onto stone and cook for 5 minutes.

8) Remove pizza. It won't be cooked all the way but will be partially cooked.

9) Top pizza with a few tablespoons of sauce, cheese, and any toppings you want.

10) Put in freezer for 10 minutes to chill.

11) Double wrap pizza with foil and label. Store in a plastic freezer bag for up to 3 months.

12) To reheat pizza, unwrap and cook at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until crust is browned and cheese is melted.

13) Eat it up!

The Freezing problem

I wasn’t quite sure how to tackle the frozen problem. I couldn’t cook the pizzas entirely because then they would be like cardboard when you re-heated them. I also couldn’t leave the dough raw just because it would be hard to work with and might burn on the outside but not cook through on the inside when re-heating.

My solution: The half-cook. Basically, I semi-cooked each pizza round, then topped it, and then froze it. This works surprisingly well!

I’m getting ahead of myself though. First, let’s make…

The dough!

I knew that it would be really hard to maintain a perfect crust through the freezing process so I didn’t go with a really thin style crust like I normally use. This crust will end up a bit thicker and slightly more doughy which is a good thing for this kind of recipe.

I'm getting pretty fast at pizza dough.

If you’re in a rush, you can use store bought dough for these pizzas without too much of a problem. I just really enjoy making pizza dough actually so I always make my own.

I want to focus more on the freezing procedure in this post rather than the dough procedure. If you want detailed instructions on the dough, check out my farmer’s market pizza post. It uses the exact same procedure as I used for this dough, but instead of 10 ounce dough balls, I cut each ball down to 6 ounces which makes each pizza a bit smaller.

You can also check out the printed recipe for this post where I list the entire dough making procedure. Remember that this recipe makes 12 pizzas. If you’re going to freeze pizzas, I feel like that’s a good number. To do less than that wouldn’t really be worth it in my opinion.

The Sauce

I whipped up a basic marinara sauce for all my pizzas. I wanted something simple and quick.

Basic stuff.

I just added my canned tomatoes to a blender (you could also use a food processor or just buy tomato sauce rather than whole tomatoes). Then added a bunch of different dried spices until I had a flavorful sauce!

That’s all there is to it!

All blended up.

Before you start making your pizzas make sure you have all of your toppings chopped and ready. The pizza process is kind of a crazy assembly line and the last thing you want to have to worry about is chopping or grating stuff while you’re doing it.

Various toppings.

The Setup

This is the set-up I came up with to make my life easier for this project.

- Pizza Stone. I put my pizza stone in the oven and pre-heated it to 450 degrees which is slightly cooler than I normally bake pizzas.

- 2 Sheet Pans or plates. I set up two sheet pans. One to move a pizza crust to after it comes out of the oven and one in the freezer to cool off the pizza once it’s topped.

- Pizza Peel. A good peel is pretty essential for this.

- Foil. I double wrapped each pizza individually in foil to ward off dreaded freezer burn.

- Gallon sized freezer bags. After the pizzas are wrapped, I stored them in large plastic bags which will make sure they keep for even longer. I was able to fit three pizzas in a bag so I needed four bags total.

The Process

I was able to get into a serious groove while doing this and was able to completely finish all my pizzas in a little over an hour. That’s well worth it in my opinion to have 12 ready-made meals in the freezer for future use.

To start, take a ball of dough and roll it out into a rough circle. I was shooting for about 8 inch pizzas. Add a very light layer of sauce to the pizza which just keeps it from puffing up too much while cooking.

Ready for the oven.

Slide this onto a hot baking stone and cook it for about 5 minutes. While it’s cooking, go ahead and roll out the second pizza, but don’t put it on the peel yet (because we need the peel to take out the first pizza).

After five minutes, pull out the first pizza and toss it on your reserve sheet pan. Add your second pizza to the peel, lightly sauce it, and slide it in the oven.

You’ll end up with this partially cooked crust:

Just to firm it up.

Add a Tablespoon or two of additional sauce, cheese, and any toppings you want. I did four different varieties for my pizzas: Artichoke, pepperoni, mushrooms and peppers, and BBQ chicken using some leftovers from my BBQ chicken nachos.

This is my artichoke version.

Ready to freeze!

After it’s topped, slide it into the freezer on your sheet pan. You should have time to then roll out your third pizza before you take your second pizza out of the oven.

Get it?

The Freezing

The reason it’s important to put the topped pizzas in the freezer for 10 minutes or so is to give them time to cool way down before you wrap them. Otherwise, you’ll have a lot of moisture and condensation in with the pizza and that’s bad news for freezing things.

As you repeat your process though, eventually you’ll have two pizzas on the sheet pan in the freezer and when you need to move your third pizza into the freezer, take your first pizza out and wrap it in foil. It should be pretty cold by this point.

I double-wrapped my pizzas in foil and labeled them with the topping and date!

Double wrapped and labeled.

Reheating

Eventually you’ll have 12 tightly wrapped pizzas ready for the icebox!

Someday, you’ll want to eat one or two of these beauties and when you do, it’s as easy as unwrapping them and putting them on a baking sheet.

Bake them at 450 degrees until the cheese is melted and the crust is golden brown, probably about 20 minutes.

You’ll be well-rewarded.

A baking sheet is fine for reheating.

I judge pizza by the crust and the crust alone generally.

And for a frozen pizza, I have to say I was really impressed. It wasn’t perfectly crisp, but it wasn’t soggy at all either. And the edges were really good actually.

It had some chew to it and a slight bite which is good. I’d put it up against any frozen pizza on the market any day.

Not bad!

This is one of those posts where I expect to receive many emails about my insanity for wanting to make my own frozen pizzas.

I get it. It’s a little weird and might seem like a lot of work, but let’s add up the time quickly and see where we stand:

Making dough: 30 minutes (This is if you’re doing it by hand!)
Making sauce: 10 minutes
Chopping/grating toppings: 15 minutes
Making/freezing pizzas: 75 minutes
Clean up: 10 minutes

Total time: 2 hours and 20 minutes which is less time than it took you to watch Avatar.

And you get 12 delicious meals out of it when Avatar just left you with an intense desire to watch Avatar again.

Getting the perfect pizza dough and perfect crust is something I could write on for days, but let’s be real: If you don’t have a brick oven that can get up to 900 degrees (I don’t) then you aren’t going to get it right. It is impossible. But you can get darn close!

Round 1: BBQ Chicken. BBQ Sauce, shredded chicken, red onion, gouda.

I knew that we were going to be doing this a few days before so I made a slightly more complicated crust that requires a day of rest in the fridge. It’s one of the better pizza dough recipes I’ve seen. Check it out here. If you don’t have an extra day and need pizza NOW, then check out Alton Brown’s recipe which I’ve also tried with great success.

So what can you put on these things? Well, really anything. I wanted to keep my crust pretty thin so I limited each pizza to just a few toppings. If you put on too many toppings then the crust won’t cook evenly.

Also, since I had 6 pizzas to make, I thought I would take a little self-guided photography lesson through depth of focus. Hence, all of these photos have varying levels of focus.

Mush, red onion, mozz. Turns out mushrooms shrink a lot on a pizza.

As far as equipment goes with pizza making, the only thing I would say really helps is a pizza stone. It makes for a much better crust. If you have a pizza peel, it will make it easier to get the pizza on and off the stone. I don’t have one actually. I just use the back of a baking sheet with a bit of cornmeal on it. Put the dough on the baking sheet, shake it back in forth to loosen it up, build your pizza, then deftly slide it off of the baking pan and onto the stone!

Mush, basil, mozz. Can you say depth of focus?

About now we were a few bottles of wine into this party and I realized this was maybe the best party idea I’ve ever had.

Spinach, pepperoni. Serious Pepperoni.

Spinach, mush, garlic, mozz. This was maybe my favorite.

Last but not least: Back to Basics. Just cheese.

As a final note, I’ve desperately been trying to submit a photo to Food Gawker and so far have tasted nothing but the tang of rejection. Leave a comment if you like any of these. Maybe I’ll get up the courage to face the Food Gawker Gods…

If you want to make some pizza on your own, you may want to invest in a Pizza stone and peel. Worth every penny.

If you actually attended this party, and are reading this, you have an obligation to comment on which one was your favorite.