Who doesn't like brussel sprouts?!

I’ve never really had a problem eating vegetables. In fact, I can’t think of a vegetable that I don’t like. I’m sure they are out there (durian fruit probably – but that’s a fruit!), but I’m usually pretty happy with almost any vegetable dish.

I’m not a normal eater really though. Most people have a problem with at least a few veggies and it seems like, to me, that most people have a problem with brussel sprouts!

Honestly, I think this is due to two causes:

1) Sprouts have some weird cultural stigmas and are frequently mentioned as the hard-to-eat veggie.

2) Most people have no earthly idea how to prepare them.

So this is the brussel sprout recipe for people who don’t like brussel sprouts. Think of it as an intro to the sprout. Because what could be a better way to eat something than to put it on a pizza?

Brussel Sprout Pizza

Yield: 2 Pizzas

Prep Time: 20 minutes plus time for dough

Total Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

2 pizza doughs (homemade is good)
1 Cup pizza sauce, below
10 ounces low moisture mozzarella cheese, grated
10 brussel sprouts, sliced thinly
8 ounces bacon, crispy
6 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
Fresh basil, chopped
Salt and pepper
Cornmeal, for peel

Homemade Pizza Sauce (adapted from American Pie)
1 (28 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 Cup water
1/4 Cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons garlic powder
1 Tablespoon dried oregano
2 Teaspoons dried basil
1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes (opt.)
Salt and pepper

Homemade Napoletana Dough (Again from American Pie)
5 Cups (22.5 ounces) bread flour
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
1 Teaspoon instant yeast
2 Cups (scant) cool water

Helpful Equipment:
- Stand mixer (for dough), but you can make it easily without
- Pizza Peel
- Pizza stone

Directions:

1) To make dough, combine water, oil, salt, and yeast in a mixing bowl. Stir together and let sit for 5 minutes to make sure yeast is active. It should bubble.

2) Stir in flour until it’s well-incorporated and forms a ball. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Then mix either with your hands or with a stand mixer. If using hands, repeatedly dip one hand in water and work the dough vigorously until it’s smooth, about 8 minutes. If using a mixer, mix with dough hook until smooth, about 6 minutes. If at any point, the dough is very sticky, mix in more flour.

3) Cut dough into 6 even pieces, coat with olive oil and add to a large plastic bag. Let rest for 20-30 minutes.

4) Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, but ideally overnight.

5) Remove from fridge at least 90 minutes before making pizza.

6) For sauce, mix together ingredients and set aside until needed.

7) Grate cheese, cook bacon, and roughly chop sprouts.

8) Preheat oven to 550 degrees with pizza stone for at least 20 minutes.

9) Roll out dough to form a 12 inch pizza. Place dough on a pizza peel lightly dusted with cornmeal. Add sauce and spread it smoothly over pie. Top with mozzarella, sprouts, bacon, blue cheese.

10) Slide pizza onto stone and let cook for 10 minutes.

11) Take out pizza and top immediately with fresh basil.

12) Slice and serve!

Making the Dough

I’ve talked a lot about making homemade pizza dough, so I’m going to do the abbreviated version in this post. If you want a full run down, this post has a great run down on the method that I used for this dough.

I really like making pizza dough. It’s actually one of the easier doughs to make in my opinion. It’s very wet so it’s actually pretty easy to work with once you get the hang of it.

The key thing to remember about homemade dough is that you want to give it at least 4 hours to rise in the fridge (overnight is great) and then you want to take it out at least 90 minutes before baking your pizza.

Beautiful things.

But there are a good number of store-bought doughs out there if you want to make this recipe even easier.

The Toppings

There’s really only a few toppings for this pie, but each of them is packing a lot of flavor.

Mini cabbages really...

This a great beginner brussel sprout recipe because you don’t need to know how to prepare them perfectly. Basically just chop off the stem-end of the sprout and then dice up the sprouts.

I sliced each sprout in half and then just sliced the sprouts roughly.

Get it?

Besides the bacon, sprouts, and blue cheese, you need a good sauce and mozzarella as well.

One thing I’m not a fan of is most store-bought sauces. Similar to my homemade trial with pasta sauce, pizza sauce tends to be pretty flavorless and too salty. So take the time to stir a few spices into normal tomato sauce. You don’t need to cook it or anything. You’ll end up with a much better sauce. Trust me.

Essentials.

Making the Pizza

Assuming you have a pizza peel and stone, making homemade pizza becomes pretty straightforward. Just make sure you heat your stone up as much as you can. I crank my oven up to 550 and let it preheat with the stone in the oven for at least 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, roll out your dough into a rough circle. Mine usually ends up slightly more rectangle in shape, but whatever. If you use the homemade dough recipe in this post, you should get about a 12 inch pizza out of each dough ball.

Than transfer the dough to your pizza peel that’s been dusted with cornmeal and ladle on a bit of sauce. I don’t like a lot of sauce on my pizzas. About half a cup per pizza is usually enough for me.

No need to over-sauce.

Spread out the sauce, then top with mozzarella cheese. Follow that with your bacon, sprouts, and blue cheese layers.

This guy is ready for the oven!

High and deep!

Slide the pizza right onto your hot stone and let it cook for about 10 minutes.

The crust should get nice and crispy and the cheese should be bubbling hot.

I snuck a peek at mine at about minute nine.

Bubble Bubble.

When you pull the pizza out, immediately top it with some fresh basil. You wouldn’t want to bake the pizza with the basil on it because it would just shrivel up and lose a lot of flavor. Fresh is best when it comes to basil.

Fresh basil. Key.

Let the pizza cool for a minute or so and then slice it up!

It's really good, people.

I usually judge most pizzas by crust alone, but I have to say that toppings on this guy surprised me. They were really flavorful. The brussel sprouts just give a light veggie flavor to the pizza. It’s really not an intense flavor and I think most people would like it.

Homemade pizza is one of my absolute favorite things to make and this recipe is a keeper for me.

I like my pizza over easy.

I’m pretty sure that I could count on one hand the things that aren’t good on a pizza. Ok. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration (or Nickxaggeration as Betsy would say), but it’s not too far off.

I had some pizza dough left over from my grilled pizza this week so I figured I would use it with a fun pizza idea I’ve been carrying around in my back pocket for a while.

It’s pretty basic: Take all your standard breakfast ingredients. Stick them on a pie. Add cheese and sauce. Consume immediately.

As it turns out, I like my pizza over-easy.

Breakfast Pizza

Yield: 2 pizzas

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes + dough time

Ingredients:

Dough: (From American Pie)
This is enough dough for four pizzas actually, but you can freeze any leftovers.
5 Cups (22 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
1 Teaspoon instant yeast (or active dry yeast, dissolved)
3 1/2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 3/4 Cups room temperature water

Other Stuff:
1 Cup Tomato Sauce
1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes (sauce)
1 Tablespoon dried oregano (sauce)
Pinch of salt and pepper (sauce)
6-8 ounces bacon
2 Russet potatoes, cubed
6 eggs, 3 per pizza
10 ounces pepper jack cheese (you could use more or less to your tastes)
Handful of spinach, roughly chopped

Helpful Equipment:
Pizza Stone
Pizza Peel

Directions:

1) To make dough, combine water, oil, sugar, salt, and yeast in a mixing bowl. Stir together and let sit for 5 minutes to make sure yeast is active. It should bubble.

2) Stir in flour until it’s well-incorporated and forms a ball. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Then mix either with your hands or with a stand mixer. If using hands, repeatedly dip one hand in water and work the dough vigorously until it’s smooth, about 8 minutes. If using a mixer, mix with dough hook until smooth, about 6 minutes. If at any point, the dough is very sticky, mix in more flour.

3) Cut dough into 4 even pieces, coat with olive oil and add to a large plastic bag. Let rest for 20-30 minutes.

4) Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, but ideally overnight.

5) Remove from fridge at least an hour before making pizza.

6) Wash and cube (or shred) potatoes.

7) Slice bacon into chunks and cook it over medium heat in a large skillet. After about 10 minutes or when bacon is just turning crispy, remove bacon.

8) Cook potatoes in bacon grease for 10 minutes until they are cooked through and slightly crispy.

9) Prepare other ingredients: chop spinach, shred cheese, mix sauce.

10) Roll out pizza dough an add it to a peel lightly dusted with flour or cornmeal. Add a thin layer of sauce.

11) Add ingredients: cheese, potatoes, bacon, spinach leaving small holes for the eggs in the center.

12) Crack eggs onto the pizza being careful not to bust the yolks.

13) Bake pizza for 12-14 minutes in a preheated 500 degree oven on a pizza stone.

14) Remove and let cool for a minute before slicing and serving.

The Dough

I’m not going to go into detail on the dough in this post because I just used leftover dough from my grilled pizza dough. It’s a pretty standard pizza dough though, but you could use any pizza dough for this guy really.

Besides some dough, you’ll need some breakfast ingredients!

Breakfast!

I knew that I wanted to pre-cook the potatoes and bacon a bit because they won’t have time to get really crispy on the pizza.

I just roughly cubed up my potatoes to make for easy cooking. Nothing special. In hindsight, I realized that it might have been fun to shred them and do a kind of hash brown pizza thing.

Makin' hash...

I also roughly chopped up the bacon and cooked it in a large skillet for about 10 minutes over medium heat until it was just turning crispy. Then I removed all the bacon and cooked the potatoes in the same pan using the bacon grease.

Here’s all my ingredients ready to go!

All set for some pizza!

Making and Baking

I did my traditional oven cooking for this pizza which meant heating up my oven and pizza stone to 500 degrees. I let it preheat with the stone in for about 30 minutes normally to make sure it’s good and hot.

Then I rolled out my dough, put it on my pizza peel dusted with cornmeal, and added a thin layer of sauce.

Gettin' sauced!

Next, all the toppings: cheese, bacon, potatoes, and spinach.

Notice that I kind of made three little holes using the toppings. I bet you can guess what’s going in these guys.

Notice the holes...

I was worried that if I didn’t leave little spaces for my eggs, they would overflow and run all over the place which I think is right.

As is though, they kind of just nestled right into the holes perfectly.

If you want runny eggs on your pizza (good idea), then try not to break them. If you break a yolk, it’ll cook completely in the oven.

I know this because I broke one of mine!

Try not to break them...

When you’re sliding this guy into the oven, be gentle. The eggs will want to slide right off the pizza which would be very bad. I found that it helped to use a spatula in my free hand to kind of lift the pizza a bit as a slid it off the peel. If you’re careful you should be able to get it safely on the hot pizza stone with minimal issues.

Bake it at 500 degrees for 12-14 minutes. The eggs will take the most time to cook. They should be set, but still runny in the center.

Then pull it out and let it sit for a minute before slicing and serving!

Pretty!

Here’s the thing about this pizza: It’s delicious. But it doesn’t keep for anything. It’s basically awesome right when it comes out of the oven and an hour later it’s not so hot.

It doesn’t store well and doesn’t microwave or reheat well. So it breaks a lot of the normal pizza benefits in that respect. But as long as you have a few people to help you eat on it, it’s a fantastic breakfast dish!

Good crust.

Someone once told me:

“If it can be made on a grill, it’s probably better on a grill.”

That was a very wise person who I can’t remember at the moment. I swear I’m not making it up though. Even if I am, it’s true. So whatever.

Grilled pizza won the poll by a long shot last week and I was happy to see that because I figured pizza is probably better on the grill, like most things. I’ve only grilled pizza once before and I was excited to try it again.

Grilled pizza is kind of a dish that requires a bit of faith. It doesn’t make sense at all that you should be able to toss dough on a grill and have it hold up. So there’s this moment where it’s kind of a leap of faith. I mean… not Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade leap of faith, but still.

But even though it seems a bit strange, it isn’t actually that hard. In fact, it might be a bit easier than oven pizza.

Grilled Veggie Pizza

Yield: 4 pizzas

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes + dough time

Ingredients:

Dough: (From American Pie)
5 Cups (22 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
1 Teaspoon instant yeast (or active dry yeast, dissolved)
3 1/2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 3/4 Cups room temperature water

Toppings: (Enough for 4 pies)
2 pounds mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 large bell pepper, chopped
1 large red pepper, chopped
8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
2 Cups sweet corn
4 scallions, diced
Fresh oregano or basil

Simple sauce:
2-3 Cups tomato sauce (depending on how saucy you like your pies)
1-2 Teaspoons red pepper flakes
2 Teaspoons garlic powder
2 Teaspoons onion powder
1 Tablespoon dried oregano
Big pinch of salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
A grill (of course you can get one on Amazon)

Directions:

1) To make dough, combine water, oil, sugar, salt, and yeast in a mixing bowl. Stir together and let sit for 5 minutes to make sure yeast is active. It should bubble.

2) Stir in flour until it's well-incorporated and forms a ball. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Then mix either with your hands or with a stand mixer. If using hands, repeatedly dip one hand in water and work the dough vigorously until it's smooth, about 8 minutes. If using a mixer, mix with dough hook until smooth, about 6 minutes. If at any point, the dough is very sticky, mix in more flour.

3) Cut dough into 4 even pieces, coat with olive oil and add to a large plastic bag. Let rest for 20-30 minutes.

4) Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, but ideally overnight.

5) Remove from fridge at least an hour before making pizza.

6) Prepare other ingredients. If you're using any meat or large veggies, pre-cook them.

7) Mix sauce and shred cheese.

8) Heat grill to high and clean it well. Rub the grates with some oil.

9) Roll out two pizzas and lay them directly on the grates. Most grills should be able to fit too pizzas at once.

10) Cook dough for about 2 minutes or until bubbles start to form on the surface of the dough.

11) Remove from heat and flip pizzas over on a baking sheet that's been lightly oiled.

12) Top pizzas with sauce, cheese, and toppings.

13) Slice pizzas back onto grill. Turn heat down to medium-high. Close lid.

14) Cook pizzas for 8-10 minutes, turning pizza 90 degrees half way through. The crust should be a deep brown and very crispy.

15) Remove from grill and cool for a minute before serving!

Making the Dough

This is a pretty standard pizza dough and is very similar to some other pizza doughs that I’ve used. At the end of the day, I’m pretty sure that most doughs would work fine on a grill. I think it’s more technique than recipe honestly.

But, this one works for sure!

Start by combining all your liquid ingredients, yeast, sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl. Let those sit for a few minutes until your yeast starts bubbling. Then either mix in your flour with a dough hook attachment on a stand mixer, or with a big wooden spoon.

Once the flour is incorporated well, let the dough sit for a few minutes to relax, then continue mixing until you end up with a smooth ball of dough. If you’re using your hands, dip one hand in water and use it to vigorously work the dough.

By hand it’ll take probably 8 minutes of kneading. By dough hook, it should only take around 6. If your dough is particularly sticky (like sticking to the bottom of the bowl) add more flour.

Eventually you should end up with a nice smooth ball.

Hands or mixer... don't matter to the dough.

Cut this into quarters and coat them all with some olive oil. Add them to a large plastic bag and let them sit at room temperature for 20-30 minutes, then move them to the fridge.

Ideally, you could let them sit overnight, but I was super-rushed on this day so I pulled them out of the fridge after just two hours. The dough worked fine, but the flavor will be better if you can give it overnight in the fridge.

Same day...

You’re ready to grill some pizza after these guys come back to room temperature, probably an hour at minimum.

Other Stuff

The key to this recipe is to make sure you have all your ingredients ready before you cook. You don’t want to be chopping while your dough is on the grill!

I mixed up a quick sauce with some tomato sauce and dried spices. Feel free to customize it to your liking.

As simple as sauce gets...

I also chopped up a bunch of veggies to throw on the pizza. I did a meatless version but you could 100% add pepperoni or anything else that you would add to a pizza to a grilled pizza.

Various goodies.

NOTE: If you’re using big pieces of veggies like this, it’s a good idea to pre-cook them a bit (on the grill maybe) before adding them to the pizza. You’ll see why soon.

Not pictured here is a pound of shredded mozzarella.

The Technique

On a normal grill, you can probably do two pizzas at a time. Roll out your dough into a large circle, or if you’re me, into a random shape of the day.

Then heat your grill to high. It needs to be hot. Clean it off well and rub it down with some oil. I used olive oil, but you could use whatever you have available.

Then the moment of truth. Toss on the dough! Just try to get it evenly on the grates.

You don’t want to top the pizza at this point, just pre-cook it a bit. If your grill is hot, two minutes should do the trick.

If you see bubbles forming on the top of your dough, it’s done.

Bubbles means done.

Use a big metal spatula or pizza peel to pull the pizza off the grill. Lightly oil a sheet pan and invert the dough on the sheet pan. The oil just makes it easier to get the pizza off when we put it back on the grill.

This is the side you add your toppings too!

Ready to top!

Now, if you’re incredibly confident in your abilities, feel free to just flip the pizza on the grill and top it quickly. I like to take my time with pizza toppings so I took my off.

When your pizza is topped like you want it, you should be able to slide the pizzas back onto the grill. Again, a pizza peel or big spatula is pretty key.

This time when the pizza is on the grill, turn the heat on the grill down to medium-high and close the lid so it can heat evenly.

It’s a pretty thing though!

Pretty things.

The Snag

Sometimes, when cooking something new, a little improvisation might be necessary to avert disaster.

So, if you’re grill is really hot, like mine was, your crust will be done after about 8-10 minutes once you’ve topped it and put it back on the grill.

But if you don’t pre-cook your veggies, they won’t be. I was shocked to find my veggies almost raw after 10 minutes even though my crust was done.

The problem, of course, is that a grill isn’t as insulated as an oven so even though the grill itself is very hot, the area around the grill isn’t as hot as my 500 degree oven. Especially because I kept opening it to take photos!

So you have two options:

1) Pre-cook your toppings a bit. You could grill them for just a minute and then chop them up and that would do the trick. Obviously, the bigger the veggies the more important this is. I should’ve pre-cooked my peppers and ‘shrooms for sure.

2) OR you could do what I did and rig a small raised area in your grill. I set a baking tray on the grill, supported by a small tray. This kept my pizza off the direct heat so I could close the lid and cook them for another 5 minutes or so until my veggies were finished cooking.

Option 1 is easier obviously.

Improvise!

The Finished Product

The best thing about improvising is when it works. And my method definitely worked.

I’m telling you, grilled pizza makes some of the best crust I’ve had. Very crispy and delicious. Just look at this crust!

SO crispy!

It’s very hard to get that kind of crust in an oven honestly.

So, if you’re a pizza fan, take a leap a faith and hit up the grill next time you’re in the mood for your favorite pie.

WINNING!

I’m not really sure why it never dawned on me to make pizza in my cast iron skillet. After all, Chicago pizzerias use cast iron to make deep dish pizza and it has qualities that are sure to make for good pie. Namely, it gets really hot and stays really hot.

So, I was very happy when it destroyed all the other options in last week’s poll. I guess you guys want to know how to make pizza in a skillet!

Well, I’m happy to oblige. There’s just one or two tricks that I discovered along the way. It’s pretty straightforward though and the pizza came out AWESOME.

Cast Iron Pizza

Yield: 1 pizza

Prep Time: 20 minutes + dough time

Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

Crust:
2 1/2 Cups bread flour
1 scant Tablespoon sugar
2 Teaspoons kosher salt
3/4 Teaspoon active dry yeast
1 1/2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 scant Cup warm water

Sauce:
1 1/2 Cups tomato sauce
1 Teaspoon dried parsley
1 Teaspoon dried marjoram
1/2 Teaspoon onion powder
1/2 Teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 Teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 Tablespoon olive oil
Big pinch of salt and pepper

Toppings:
- 1/2 pound sausage, browned
- 1/4 Cup scallions, chopped
- 8-10 ounces mozzarella cheese
- 2 Tablespoons fresh basil, minced

Helpful Equipment:
A cast iron skillet obviously!

Directions:

1) To make dough, add water, sugar, salt, and yeast to a bowl and stir. Let sit for 5 minutes so yeast dissolves and starts to foam. Add flour and stir well to combine.

2) Use a hand dipped in water to vigorously work the dough until it forms a ball. Let the dough rest for a few minutes and then continue to work it until it is really soft and pliable, about 5-6 minutes of mixing.

3) Coat the dough with olive oil and store it in a plastic bag. Let it rise at room temp for an hour, then punch it down, reshape it into a ball, and store it in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Remove it an hour before you intend to make pizza.

4) Prepare all your ingredients: brown sausage, chop basil and scallions, and grate cheese.

5) Stir together sauce ingredients and adjust to your tastes.

6) Roll dough out into a large circle and place it in the center of your cold skillet. Trim off excess dough, leaving about a inch of dough up the side of the skillet. Use your fingers to fold the dough over itself, making a crust.

7) Add sauce, sausage, scallions, and cheese to pizza.

8) Cook the pizza ON THE STOVETOP over high heat for 3-4 minutes to rapidly heat the pan up.

9) Move the pizza to a 450 degree oven until the pizza finishes cooking, about 18 minutes.

10) Remove the pizza and use a spatula to carefully slide the pizza out of the skillet.

11) Let it cool, slice it up, and serve it!

Making the dough

This is my standard recipe for a thicker pizza crust. You wouldn’t want a really thin crust for this pizza. It would just burn I think.

For the dough, mix together water, sugar, salt, and yeast in a bowl. Stir it together and let it sit for a few minutes until yeast is dissolved and foaming a bit. Then add in your flour and stir it together.

By hand is for winners.

Use a hand dipped in water to vigorously work the dough into a ball.

As you work the dough, you might notice that it’s too wet or too dry. For example, my photo above, top right, is too dry, I added a few extra tablespoons of water. The dough should be pretty moist and flexible. If it seems firm, let it rest and relax for five minutes, then continue to work it.

After about 8 minutes of kneading it, you should have a very soft ball of dough (bottom left). Coat the dough well in olive oil and place it in a plastic bag. If you’re using the dough the same day, let it rise for an hour at room temperature, then take it out and de-gas it. Reshape it and store it in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Then take it out of the fridge at least an hour before you need it.

The Toppings

I kept my toppings for this pizza pretty straightforward, but you could use any toppings that you would put on a normal pizza.

The sauce I used is just some dried spices stirred into tomato sauce. I kind of play with it every time I make pizza. It’s always good though.

The sauce!

I also chopped up some scallions and basil, browned some sausage, and grated a lot of cheese.

Not pictured: basil/scallions

Shaping the pizza

This was the part that I was kind of winging. While normally, I would heat up my pizza stone and just slide the pizza on it, I knew this wouldn’t work with the cast iron skillet. I didn’t want to be putting dough in a very hot skillet.

So I started with a cold pan.

This worked just fine.

Roll the dough into a large circle and just plop it in the center of your skillet. You don’t need to oil the skillet or anything. The dough shouldn’t stick to it at all assuming you have a well-seasoned skillet. Once the dough is in your skillet (top right), use a knife to cut off any extra dough, leaving about an inch of dough up the side of the skillet (bottom left). Then use your fingers to kind of just fold the dough over itself, forming a crust (bottom right).

Now we can make some pizza!

Add a light coating of sauce to the pizza. You probably won’t need all of your pizza sauce. Then add on the sausage and scallions.

Sauced and topped.

Next add on all that grated cheese! I also sprinkled on some freshly ground pepper just for extra flavor.

Lots of mozz.

The Heat Trick

So I had a problem at this point. I know that to get a good crust, the dough needs to be cooked at a really hot temperature. The hotter the better. But I have a cold pan which will take forever to heat up in the oven.

So I thought I’d just cook my pizza on the stove top for a while which would heat up the bottom of the pan really quickly without cooking the toppings.

This worked like a charm.

Quick heat.

Crank up your stove to HIGH heat and cook the pizza over high heat for about 3 minutes. You won’t notice any change in the pizza, but the pan should be really hot.

Then move it to a 450 degree oven and continue to cook it until the crust is browned and the cheese melted. This took my pie about 18 minutes.

Removing the Pie

When your pizza comes out of the oven, you should be able to get a spatula and just slide the pizza right out of the pan!

It’s a beautiful thing! (I also sprinkled on my chopped basil when the pizza came out of the oven.)

Slides right out!

Let this cool for a minute or two and then slice it up.

The real test for me was the crust and I thought this was a really good crust. Nice and crispy but still somewhat chewy.

The real test.

As I see it, this pizza was as good or better than a lot of pizzas I’ve made on my pizza stone! It was awesome.

The only downside to the cast iron method is that it’s kind of hard to make more than one pizza in a row. When you pull out your first pie, your pan will be way to hot to shape another pie in for at least 15 minutes. This probably isn’t a big deal unless you’re planning a pizza party or something.

Chalk this up to another incredible use for a cast iron skillet!

Gimme the blues anytime!

Last week’s poll was a list of pizzas from a local pizza joint here in town. They make really unique and delicious pies so I thought I’d try my hand at recreating one of them.

Let me start this post by saying that I’ve never actually had their version of the winning pizza, The Delta Blues, but I figured I’d try my hand at it anyway. It’s described as a red sauce pizza with mushrooms, bacon, blue cheese, and spinach.

I figured I could handle that. This turned out to be a very flavorful pizza. My favorite part of it was actually the spinach, but we’ll get there.

Delta Blues Pizza

Yield: 2 pizzas

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour + time for dough

Ingredients:

1 recipe of pizza dough, below (makes two pizzas)
1 Cup pizza sauce, below
16 ounces mozzarella cheese, shredded
4 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
8 ounces bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 pound mushrooms, sliced and sauteed
4 Cups baby spinach, chopped
Salt and pepper

Basic red sauce:
1 Cup tomato sauce or strained tomatoes
1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 Teaspoon garlic powder
1 Tablespoon dried parsley
1/2 Teaspoon onion powder
Pinch of salt and pepper

New York Style Pizza Dough (From American Pie)
Makes 2 large pizzas.
5 Cups (22.5 ounces) bread flour
1 1/2 Tablespoons honey or sugar
3 Teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/2 Teaspoons instant yeast
3 Tablespoons olive oil (plus more for the dough later)
1 3/4 Cups room temperature water

Helpful Equipment:
Pizza stone
Pizza peel

Directions:

TO make the dough...

1) Add all the ingredients to a large bowl and stir together with a large spoon until the dough comes together.

2) Dip one hand in a bowl of warm water and vigorously knead the dough in the bowl, constantly turning the bowl, until the dough comes together and starts to firm up, about 4 minutes.

3) Let the dough rest for 5 minutes.

4) Continue to work it for another 2-3 minutes until the dough is soft and smooth and very elastic.

5) Cut the dough in half, roll each half into a ball, and add each ball to a plastic bag coated lightly with olive oil.

6) Let dough sit at room temp for 15 minutes and then store in the fridge overnight.

7) Remove the dough from the fridge 2 hours before making pizza.

Making the pizza...

1) Combine all sauce ingredients in a bowl. Feel free to add other ingredients to your liking.

2) Cook bacon in strips in a large skillet, until they are browned, but not quite crispy. Remember that the bacon will cook in the oven as well.

3) Pour out the bacon grease but leave a tablespoon or two. Add your sliced mushrooms and cook for a few minutes over medium-high heat until the mushrooms release their liquid and turn soft and browned.

4) De-gas dough, roll it into a 14 inch round, and add it to a prepared pizza peel. Dust the peel with a bit of flour or cornmeal so the dough slides off easily.

5) Add a light layer of sauce to pizza followed by mozzarella cheese, bacon, mushrooms, blue cheese, and a pinch of fresh ground pepper.

6) Slide the pizza into a very hot, pre-heated 500 degree oven for 14-15 minutes.

7) When the pizza comes out of the oven, add chopped spinach to the top.

8) Let cool for a minute or two and then slice and eat!

Adapted from a Pablo's pizza.

Making the Dough

You could use store bought pizza dough for this, but for my money nothing beats homemade crust. Once you get the hang of it, it really only takes about 10-15 minutes to whip up. Of course, for a really good dough, you do need to let it sit overnight, so there’s some planning involved.

Sometimes I use my stand mixer for this, but on this day I did it by hand.

Get it?

Start by adding all the dough ingredients to a large bowl. Mix them together with a large spoon until they come together (top left). Then dip your hand in a bowl of warm water and knead the dough vigorously. After a few minutes the dough will start to firm up (top right). At that point, let it rest for 5 minutes which will let the dough relax.

Continue to knead it in the bowl with your hand. After another few minutes you should end up with a really soft dough that’s very elastic and stretchy (bottom left). Cut this dough into two even halves and stick them in some large plastic bags with a good drizzle of olive oil (bottom right). Let these sit at room temperature for 15 minutes and then store them in the fridge overnight.

Yes. That’s right. Overnight. That requires you to do some planning, but trust me. It’s worth it.

Making the sauce

I kind of mess around with red sauce and the above recipe is my most current version. Seriously though, I recommend that you just add a cup or two of tomato sauce to a bowl and stir in dried spices until it tastes good! If it tastes good straight, it’ll taste good on a pizza!

Saucy!

The Toppings

There are only three toppings for this pizza: bacon, mushrooms, and spinach. The bacon and mushrooms need to be cooked before going on the pie. Some people don’t cook the mushrooms before adding them to pizza, but I’ve found that this makes the pizza kind of watery because the mushrooms release a lot of liquid as they cook.

If you saute them for a few minutes though, they release most of their liquid and you don’t have that issue.

I cooked my bacon in strips in a large skillet until it was not quite crispy, but definitely browned. Remember that it’s going to cook further in the oven.

Then I used a few tablespoons of the bacon grease to saute my sliced mushrooms for about 5 minutes until they are soft and lightly seared.

The cooked stuff.

You’ll obviously need some cheese also. For this pizza, mozzarella and blue cheese are what you need! Shred the mozzarella and crumble the blue cheese if it isn’t crumbled already.

Cheesy!

Making the pizza

A few tips for making the pizza to really make it exceptional.

The first thing, and most important, is to make sure you get your oven as hot as possible. Hopefully you have a pizza stone you can preheat in the oven, but heat it up to 500 degrees and let it get hot for 20 minutes or so.

Second, be sure to take your dough out of the fridge about 2 hours before you want to make the pizza. Letting it come up to room temperature will make it easier to stretch and shape.

Third, when you’re shaping your pizza, feel free to use a roller to get it in a rough circle, but the dough should be very strong and you should be able to pick it up and fling it around without worry.

Once it’s the right size (probably 14 inches across), lay it on a pizza peel or a baking sheet that’s been coasted lightly with cornmeal or flour.

Fourth, go light on the sauce. A light coating of sauce is all you need.

This is my pie, shaped and ready to go!

Shaped and sauced.

Then I added on some mozzarella, my bacon and mushrooms, the blue cheese, and some extra mozzarella on top. I also added on a good pinch of fresh black pepper.

High and deep!

Slide this beauty onto your very hot baking stone and cook it for about 14 minutes. The crust should be a nice golden brown and the cheese nice and bubbly.

This is about as perfect as it gets.

14 minutes later...

What about the spinach?!

Don’t worry. I didn’t forget the spinach. The key to adding greens like spinach to a pizza is to add them right when the pie comes out of the oven. If you actually cook the pizza for 14 minutes with spinach on top, they’ll just shrivel up and burn.

But if you chop it up roughly, and add it to the pizza right when it comes out of the oven, the heat from the pizza will wilt it slightly, but it’ll still be a tiny bit crunchy.

Chop the spinach first!

You’ll want to let this cool for a minute or two, but then you should slice it up and eat it as soon as possible!

A slice of the blues.

I used a bit of a thicker crust for this pizza than I have with some other pizzas I’ve made because the toppings on this guy were pretty heavy. It turned out to be the perfect combination though. I really liked this pizza!

Homemade pizza is one of those things where the little details make all the difference. Homemade dough, a hot oven, and fresh ingredients can really make something special.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a FAN of The Delta Blues!

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.

Fresh tomatoes are the best.

One of my favorite ways to take advantage of all the fresh produce around this time of year is to throw a pizza party. Invite a few friends over, take a trip to the farmer’s market and pick out some really fresh toppings, and then experiment with four or five different pizzas! The thing about having a pizza party like this is that a lot of the work is front-loaded (making the dough, cutting toppings, grating cheese, etc) so when the party is in full-swing, you can actually relax with everybody else!

Neo-Neapolitan Pizza Dough (From American Pie)
Makes 4 10-ounce dough balls.

- 5 Cups (22.5 ounces) unbleached bread flour
- 1 Tablespoon honey
- 2 Teaspoons salt
- 1 Teaspoon instant yeast
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1 3/4 Cups plus 1 Tablespoon room-temp water

Helpful Equipment:
- Kitchen Scale
- Pizza Peel
- Pizza Stone

Making the dough

This is my go-to pizza dough recipe these days. I find that it makes a really nice crust that isn’t too thick or thin. It’s has a great crunch to it but is still a tiny bit chewy in the middle. It’s pretty all-purpose which I like for a thing like this where I’m making a bunch of different pizzas.

You can do this!

If you’re using a mixer, mix all the dry ingredients together in the mixing bowl and then add the wet ingredients. Mix on low speed with a dough hook until everything comes together (about 4 minutes), then let the dough rest for 5 minutes in the bowl. This will help it relax and make it easier to mix. Then mix it on medium-low for another 2 minutes until it forms a smooth ball that clears the sides of the bowl but sticks slightly to the bottom.

If it’s too dry, mix in water by the Tablespoon. if it’s too sticky, then do the same with flour. The dough should pass the windowpane test (Rip off a piece of dough and pull it apart. Can you see light through it before it rips? Then you’re on the right track.)

If you’re using hands, stir everything together in a bowl until it forms a ball. Mix the dough with your hands by continuously dipping your hand in water and work the dough as you turn the ball (think of your hand like a dough hook). As all the flour gets incorporated, the dough will become hard to work with. Let it rest for 5 minutes at that point to relax (you and the dough). Then continue mixing again for 2 or 3 minutes until it passes the windowpane test.

Measuring the dough

Regardless of what technique you use, measure your dough out into 10 ounce balls right away and put them in large plastic bags with some olive oil.

Overnight is best.

Let these sit at room temperature for 15 minutes and then stick them in the fridge overnight. If you don’t have time for that, you can let them rise at room temperature for an hour, then take them out of the bags, punch them down to get out some of the gas, return them to the bags, and refrigerate them for 2 hours.

I highly recommend just doing the dough the day before (or a few days before). You’ll end up with better crust and less work to do the day of the pizza making.

This was my dough after a night in the fridge.

Results of the slow rise.

Day of Preparation

Whether or not you decide to give your pizza the overnight treatment, you need to bring the pizza back to room temperature before using it. Otherwise it’ll be too hard to work with. At least two hours before you want to make pizza, take out each dough ball, punch it down, form a ball and put it on a baking sheet.

Drizzle on a bit of oil oil onto each ball and cover all of them with a damp towel. (I did 1.5 times a batch of dough which is why I have 6.)

So to be clear, if you want to make the dough the same day you’re making the pizza, you need to make it about 6 hours before dinner time. Trust me. It’s easier to do it the day before by a long shot.

Very important.

The Pizzas

Finally, some pizza making. I picked up a few great things at the farmer’s market for this meal including some heirloom tomatoes, purple peppers, nice yellow squash, fresh arugula, and hot Italian sausage.

I picked up some sopressata and a few other things (like a lot of mozzarella cheese) from the store as well.

Can't go wrong here really.

For the sauce on all my pizzas I used this basic marinara sauce (also from American Pie)

Basic No-cook Marinara Sauce (I changed around some stuff from the original. Feel free to customize based on what you have in your pantry.)
Makes 6 Cups, enough for probably 18 pizzas. You can freeze the leftovers!

- 1 28 ounce can tomato purée
- 1 1/2 Cups water
- 1 Tablespoon dried parsley
- 1 Tablespoon dried basil
- 1 Teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 Teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/2 Teaspoon dried marjoram
- 1/4 Cup olive oil
- 2 Tablespoons garlic powder
- 1/4 Cup red wine vinegar
- Salt and pepper to taste

Just mix all that together in a big bowl and you’re ready to go! It’s actually a really delicious sauce.

Cooking the Pizzas

I used the exact same technique to make each of the below pizzas. Roll out the dough until it’s the desired size (I shot for about 12 inches across). Place the dough on a pizza peel that’s been dusted with corn meal or semolina flour. Add a few Tablespoons of sauce. Add your toppings. Slide it onto a 500 degree (pre-heated) pizza stone. Each pizza should take 10-12 minutes to be done.

Pizza Margherita

The first pizza I made was a take on a classic Italian pizza with fresh mozzarella, heirloom tomatoes, and basil. It’s also the pizza in the first photo for this post.

Don't over top the pizzas...

Meat Lovers

I had some meat lovers in attendance so I did one with just the Italian sausage (I pre-cooked it) and the sopressata.

For the meat lovers...

The Purple Pepper Pizza

This one had these nice little purple pepper slices on it along with fresh yellow squash, cheese, and sopressata. The purple peppers lost a bit of their color in the oven, but it was still tasty.

The Purple Pepper Pizza!

The Leftovers

I made a pizza at the end of the night with just the leftovers so it had some meat, some peppers and squash, a few tomatoes, and I topped it some fresh arugula when it came out of the oven which gave it a peppery flavor.

Last one...

I’ve posted a lot of pizza posts on Macheesmo, but hopefully they make it accessible. The thing that made all these pizzas very tasty was the nice fresh veggies. Their flavors really came through nicely. I was really impressed by how much I liked the squash actually.

Pizza is really one of my favorite things to make and with just a bit of time you can blow 95% of restaurant pizzas out of the water.

Here’s a few other pizzas I’ve made over the years:

- Mashed Potato Pizza
- Shrimp Pizza with Red Pepper Pesto
- 3 Tasty Pizzas
- Deep Dish Pizza

Of course, I’m not the first person to think of this kitschy combo of pizza and spanakopita. What I wasn’t expecting was that the other person who’s well known for it was Rachel Ray. I just had a freakin’ Rachel Ray moment: Take two things that have similar names and stick them together. It might not be tasty, but it’ll be super-cute.

Luckily, my spanakopizza was also extremely tasty. Like… maybe my favorite thing ever.

Delish.

Let it ring throughout the Internet world, if Rachel Ray wants to have an official spanakopizza challenge, she can bring it. Her version is way more pizza than spanakopita. If fact, it looks like a pizza with spinach and stuff on it. It doesn’t even have feta on it! How can you steal the spanakopita name without phyllo dough or feta?!

So I’m claiming the name because my version is, I think, superior.

Spanakopizza

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

1 package frozen phyllo dough
1 Cup olive oil, for brushing
1 pound fresh spinach or 1 10 ounce box of frozen spinach
1 pound feta cheese, crumbled
1/3 Cup fresh dill, chopped
1/2 pound low-moisture mozzarella cheese, grated
1/4 large red onion, sliced
1 roasted red pepper, diced (I used one from a jar)
1 Cup fresh spinach (optional)
1/2 Teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)

Directions:

1) Blanch fresh spinach in salted water until it's wilted or thaw frozen spinach in microwave. Either way, be sure to press out liquid with paper towels. You don't want a lot of liquid in the spinach.

2) Roughly chop the spinach and add it to the feta and dill.

3) Layer pieces of phyllo dough on top of each other, brushing each piece with olive oil. Use about 8 pieces of phyllo dough.

4) Take a few single sheets of phyllo dough and brush them with oil. Roll them up and place them around the edge of the baking dish to mimic a pizza crust.

5) Brush a rimmed baking sheet with olive oil and carefully transfer the 8-sheet phyllo crust to the bottom of the baking sheet. Line the edges of the baking sheet with the rolled doughs.

6) Brush the top of the dough with olive oil and poke a few holes in the surface so steam can escape.

7) Crumble the feta-spinach mixture in the bottom of the baking sheet. Spread it evenly.

8) Next add mozzarella cheese and finally sprinkle on toppings.

9) Before you cook the pizza, cut it into pieces. It will be way to flaky to cut after cooking.

10) Bake the spanakopizza for 30 minutes at 400 degrees or until the crust is lightly browned and the cheese melted.

11) Let it cool briefly and serve!

The Spinach Topping

I didn’t make a filling that’s quite as complicated as a real spanakopita filling. I wanted something really clean in flavor and also easier to make. You could definitely use frozen spinach for this if you wanted. If you want to use fresh though, just steam it for about 1 minute until it’s wilted and then remove it.

After it cools (or thaws if you’re using the frozen), be sure to wrap the spinach in a towel or a few paper towels and wring out as much liquid as possible. You’ll be shocked how much water comes out. That would definitely mess up a pizza so make sure to do that. Then give your spinach a rough chop and mix it with your crumbled feta and chopped dill.

Get it?

Prepping the crust

Instead of using pizza dough, I decided to try to layer phyllo dough on a baking sheet to make a crust for the pizza. Hopefully, it’d be really flaky and resemble both pizza and spanakopita. The one change I made between this and the spanakopita I made was to use olive oil instead of clarified butter. I just figured olive oil was a bit more pizza-ish.

For the crust, I used 8 sheets of phyllo, brushing each sheet with olive oil and layering one on top of the other on a clean surface. Try to keep them lined up but don’t worry if you get a small rip or bubble. The multiple sheets will cover any minor problems.

A few bubbles are fine.

Also, I kind of wanted to mimic an edge of crust around the edge of a pizza, so I took some single sheets of phyllo dough, brushed them on one side with olive oil and then rolled them up!

Maybe not classic technique...

Next, get a large rectangular, rimmed baking sheet and brush it completely with olive oil. Then carefully transfer your 8-sheet crust to the bottom of the baking sheet. If you have any edges overhanging, don’t chop them off! Just kind of roll them inside the dish to make the crust a bit thicker. If you’re using the rolled edge thing above, line the edge of the pan with those rolled phyllo sheets.

Brush the entire thing (including the edges) with olive oil and then poke some holes in the dough with a fork to let steam escape.

Feelin' confident at this point.

Other Ingredients

At some point, you’ll need to prep your other ingredients like slicing your onion, chopping the roasted pepper and grating the cheese!

Finishing the spanakopizza

After you brush your crust with olive oil, crumble all of your spinach mixture in the bottom. Try to spread it out evenly, but you probably won’t have enough to cover the entire surface. That’s fine! Think of it more like a topping rather than a filling.

It's a topping, not a layer.

Next, add your mozzarella. I only used 1/2 pound of mozzarella for my entire pizza. You could definitely do more if you want, but I thought it was a good light amount of cheese.

Then sprinkle on your onions, roasted peppers, and fresh spinach. The fresh spinach will crisp up a bit on the surface and give a good contrast to the other spinach in the feta mixture. Sprinkle on some red pepper flakes if you want a bit of heat also.

Important part

Make sure to cut your pizza BEFORE you cook it. The phyllo dough is very flaky and it’s a lot easier to cut it prior to cooking it.

The pizza part.

Bake this for about 30 minutes at 400 degrees or until the crust is lightly browned and the cheese melted. The phyllo dough will take some time to brown nicely though.

Then let it cool and serve it up!

This worked out.

You can see that each piece is nice and thin and it really is like both a slice of pizza and a piece of spanakopita!

Thin slice.

I was most worried about the crust, but honestly I think I’m going to start using phyllo dough on more occasions for pizza. Look at this nice, crispy golden brown crust!

Super crispy!

Betsy and I ate this with some salad for dinner, but you could chop it into smaller pieces and serve it as an awesome party appetizer. I liked it because it was lighter than your normal spanakopita. It didn’t feel filling at all. But it still had that spanakopita flavor.

Honestly, this was one of my favorite things I’ve cooked in a few weeks at least. It was fun to make and very delicious.

I’m making three different pizzas in this post and three different sauces. But all of them are on the same crust so that makes them pretty easy to throw together once the crust is ready to go.

Here’s a few slices of each.

Let’s talk dough first and then we’ll get to each pie individually. I went with a dough that has been my go-to for the last few months. It’s a bit sticky and tougher to handle than some, but once it’s cooked, it produces a very crispy and delicious crust. It’s supposed to replicate the New Haven style that I know and love.

Neo-Neapolitan Pizza Dough

Yield: Makes four 10 ounce dough balls

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes + rise time

Ingredients:

22.5 ounces (about 5 cups) unbleached high-gluten or bread flour
1 Tablespoon sugar or honey (I used sugar)
3 1/2 Teaspoons kosher salt (or 2 Teaspoons table salt)
1 Teaspoon instant yeast
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 3/4 Cups + 1 Tablespoon room temperature water (70 degrees F.)

Helpful Equipment:
Stand Mixer (or you can definitely do it by hand as well)
Pizza Stone and peel

Directions:

1) It's best to make this recipe the day before you want to make pizzas. If you're using a stand mixer, add everything but the flour to your mixer and stir it together. Let it sit for a few minutes until the yeast starts to foam. Then add the flour and mix it with the dough hook until it comes into a ball, just a few minutes.

2) Let the dough rest for 5 minutes to relax, then mix for another 3-4 minutes. If the dough is really sticky, add more flour by the tablespoon.

3) If you're doing it by hand, mix all your ingredients together in a large bowl with a spoon until they come together. Then start working the dough by sticking your hand in a bowl of room temperature water and work the dough vigorously as you rotate the bowl with the other hand. After 4 to 5 minutes of this, all the flour should be well incorporated and you should have a coarse dough ball. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes and then continue to work the dough for 3 minutes or until the dough is slightly sticky, soft, and supple. Remember that wet dough won't stick to your wet hand, so dipping it in water is important while you work it in the bowl.

4) Once your dough is made, shape it into 4 10-ounce balls. Store the balls in some large plastic bags drizzled with olive oil. Let these rest at room temp for 15 minutes, then store them in the fridge overnight (or at least 4 hours).

5) Remove dough balls and let sit at room temperature for 90 minutes before using so the dough can return to room temperature.

From American Pie. Read my review.

Making the Dough

I think the most important thing about pizza dough is giving it plenty of time to rest before you make the pies. In fact, if at all possible, make the dough the day before you plan on making the pies. I think this is better in most cases because it splits up the work.

You do not have to have a stand mixer to make this dough. I’ve made it easily half a dozen times by hand and it’s just as good and honestly kind of a fun workout! With a mixer, just mix all your ingredients in a large bowl mix on medium with the dough hook until the dough comes together in a ball.

Then let the dough rest for 5 minutes to relax a bit. Then mix it for another 3 minutes on medium. The dough should clear the sides of the bowl, but just barely stick to the bottom of the pan.

If you’re doing it by hand, mix all your ingredients together in a large bowl with a spoon until they come together. Then start working the dough by sticking your hand in a bowl of room temperature water and work the dough vigorously as you rotate the bowl with the other hand. After 4 to 5 minutes of this, all the flour should be well incorporated and you should have a coarse dough ball. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes and then continue to work the dough for 3 minutes or until the dough is slightly sticky, soft, and supple. Remember that wet dough won’t stick to your wet hand, so dipping it in water is important while you work it in the bowl.

With either method, if the dough is too sticky, mix it a tablespoon of flour. If it’s too dry, mix in a Tablespoon of water.

Shaping the dough

Once your dough is made, immediately shape it into four 10 ounce balls and store them in a few plastic bags drizzled with some oil. I like to use gallon bags and put in two balls of dough per bag. Let these rest at room temperature for 15 minutes and then stick them in the fridge overnight.

Get it?

The Sauces

I made three different sauces, but they were all very simple. You can make all of them can be made in about 20 minutes total.

Basic Marinara Sauce
Makes about 4 Cups

- 1 can (28 ounces) crushed tomatoes
- 5 cloves garlic, minced
- 2-3 Tablespoons fresh basil, minced
- 1 Teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 Lemon, juice only
- Salt and pepper to taste

You can cook this sauce if you want to make it a bit thicker, but honestly, I just stick all the ingredients in a blender and blend them up. I like the fresh, light flavors. If you cook them too much they get thick and like a pasta sauce.

Chipotle Marinara Sauce
Makes 2 Cups

- 2 Cups of the above marinara sauce
- 3-6 Chipotle peppers from chipotle in Adobo sauce
- 1 Tablespoon (or more) of the Adobo sauce
- 1/2 Teaspoon crushed red pepper

The thing to remember about this sauce is that it should be really spicy on its own. It will mellow out on the pizza with the cheese and everything. I used about 4 Chipotles in my batch, but I’d kick it up a notch if I made it again, which I will because it rocks. Again, just blend or process everything together.

White Sauce (Adapted from American Pie)
Makes about 1 Cup, enough for a few pizzas actually

- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1 small onion, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/2 Cup heavy cream
- 1 Teaspoon thyme (fresh would be best but I used dried)
- Salt and pepper to taste

In a sauce pan or frying pan, heat up your oil and add your onions and garlic. Cook over medium heat for a few minutes until they are softened (probably 5 minutes). Add the cream and lower the heat to low. Stir for another 3-5 minutes until the mixture is thick and reduces a bit. Take it off the heat and then add your thyme and taste for salt and pepper. Let this cool completely before using.

You can make all of these sauces days before using them. They would store in the fridge without a problem. The marinara sauce and white sauce are great on pasta also if you have leftovers.

The two red sauces are not identical. Trust me.

Ok. We got our sauces and crust ready. Let’s do the pizzas. All of these pizzas are cooked at 500 degrees on a pizza stone for about 12 minutes. A pizza peel would be helpful also, but I’ve used the back of a baking dish to slide in the pizza in a pinch.

If you need help shaping the pizza, check out this post where I go into much more detail on the shaping, etc.

I must admit, this pizza is not an original. I totally stole it from a restaurant here in DC, but man is it good and I think I have it down pretty close.

Fire/Smoke Pizza (Adapted from Matchbox Pizza)

- Chipotle marinara sauce
- 2 ounces shredded low moisture mozzarella
- 6 ounces shredded smoked gouda
- 1/4 red onion, sliced
- 1/2 roasted red pepper, sliced (I just bought the jarred variety.)

This is a surprising pizza for people because when it’s done, it looks like a normal cheese pizza, but when you take a bite it’s spicy and smokey and delicious. It’s seriously an amazing pizza.

Holy Chipotle Batman

Next on the list is a white pizza which is creamy and more filling.

This pizza tastes kind of like a mushroom Alfredo, but in a very good way.

Mushroom White Pizza

- White sauce
- 8 ounces shredded low moisture mozzarella
- 1/2 pound cremini mushrooms, sliced and sauteed for a few minutes until soft
- 3 ounces hot Italian Sopressata (optional)

I decided to add the Sopressata to this pie at the last minute and I think it was a good call. It gets kind of crispy and gives a great texture and a bit of spice to the finished pizza. The mushrooms and white sauce go great together.

Awesome.

Finally on the list is a meat lover’s type pizza although the meat is hidden under a light bed of arugula.

I used some high end meats for this pizza which give much more flavor than normal pepperoni, but you can use that also.

Macheesmo’s Meat Lovers

- Marinara sauce
- 8 ounces low moisture mozzarella, shredded
- 3 ounces hot sopressata
- 3 ounces proscuitto
- Arugula

Add the arugula to this pizza after it comes out of the oven. It gives some peppery freshness to the pizza that works great with the spicy meats. It doesn’t look like there is a lot of meat on it, but it’s packed with flavor.

The meat is hiding you see.

If you’ve passed second grade math, you’ll note that I have one ball of dough left over. You could obviously just make one of these again (people’s choice!) or another pizza.

The Fire/Smoke pizza was the favorite on this night I think, but it’s a pretty close call.

If you’re a home pizza maker, you gotta try these.

This recipe was seriously a game changer for me. This deep dish pizza was the first thing I’ve made out of my new Cook’s Illustrated subscription and they hit this one out of the freakin’ galaxy. The toppings are perfect, the crust is flaky, and the whole deal is just scrumptious.

The dough on this pizza is amazing.

When you think about it, even if you are making this from scratch, it’s really only a few steps! Make the crust. Make the sauce. Grate some cheese. Bake the pizza!

How hard could that be? As you can imagine, the devil is in the details as they say.

The one thing I would not recommend skipping for this recipe is the crust. It really makes it happen. If you had to save time, you could buy jarred sauce I guess.

Deep Dish Pizza with Ricotta and Olives

Yield: 2 pizzas.

Prep Time: 50 minutes + rise time

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes + rise time

Ingredients:

Dough:
3 1/4 Cups (16.25 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 Cup (2.75 ounces) semolina flour (original recipe uses yellow cornmeal)
1 1/2 Teaspoons salt
2 Teaspoons sugar
2 1/4 Teaspoons instant yeast
1 1/4 Cups water (10 ounces), at room temperature
7 Tablespoons unsalted butter, (3 melted, 4 softened)
1 Teaspoon olive oil for bread
4 Tablespoons olive oil for baking pans

Sauce:
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium onion, grated in grater
1/2 Teaspoon dried oregano
2 cloves garlic, minced
Pinch of salt
1/4 Teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (my addition)
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1/4 Teaspoon sugar
2 Tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh basil
1 Tablespoon olive oil
Ground pepper to taste

Toppings: (Remember this is enough for 2 pizzas)
1 pound whole milk mozzarella cheese, shredded
1/4 Cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 Cup kalamata olives, coarsely chopped (I really like olives. Original recipe is half this much.)
1/2 Cup ricotta cheese (same as olives)
1/2 Cup chopped arugula (optional. I left this out.)

Helpful Equipment:
Cake Pan (If you have a real deep dish pan you can use it, but this recipe is written for just a 9 inch normal cake pan.)

Directions:

1) Add all dry ingredients to a bowl and mix well, then slowly add water and melted butter until the dough ball comes together. Knead this for 8-10 minutes until the dough is glossy and smooth.

2) In a mixer, beat dough for 5-6 minutes with the dough hook on medium.

3) Let ball of dough rise in a lightly oiled bowl for about an hour or until it doubles in size.

4) Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out to roughly a 16 by 12 rectangle.

5) Spread on softened butter leaving about 1/2 inch around the edges of the dough.

6) Roll up the dough like a cigar. Cut the dough roll in half. For each half fold into thirds. Pinch the seams around the dough to form a ball.

7) Let dough rise a second time in your fridge for 60 minutes.

8) For sauce, melt butter in a pan over medium-high heat. Then add onions (grated with a box grater, not chopped) along with dried spices and pinch of salt. Let cook for a few minutes until the onions are slightly browned.

9) Add garlic, tomatoes (including juice), and sugar. Bring to simmer and let it reduce for 25 minutes or so on low heat. Once it is reduced, stir in chopped basil and olive oil and ground pepper. Set aside to cool.

10) Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

11) Roll dough ball into about a 15 inch diameter circle.

12) Add 2 Tablespoons of oil to cake pan and then add pizza crust. Mush the dough into all the corners of the pan and crimp it around the edges.

13) Add about two cups of shredded mozzarella cheese to the bottom, followed by 1.5 cups (or about half) of your marinara sauce. Add a thin layer of grated Parmesan and dot the top with olives and ricotta cheese.

14) Bake 425 for about 30 minutes. Let this cool for 5 minutes before chopping into it!

Adapted from a Cook's Illustrated recipe.

Kind of looks like a lot of ingredients, but the dough ingredients are pretty basic and I had most of the sauce ingredients on hand also.

The basics.

Making the dough

Deep dish pizza dough has a reputation of being very bready. And not in a good way. This recipe takes a page out of the laminated doughs department (think pastry and croissant!) to produce a good dough that can hold all the toppings, but also is very flaky.

To make the dough, add all your dry ingredients to a bowl and mix well, then slowly add your water and melted butter until the dough ball comes together. Knead this for 8-10 minutes until the dough is glossy and smooth.

Now allow me a minute to gush.  I We got our first wedding gift this last weekend from Betsy’s mom, a KitchenAid stand mixer! I put it to work immediately for this recipe!

My precious!

Beat it for 5-6 minutes with the dough hook on medium and the dough was perfect!

Next let your ball of dough rise in an lightly oiled bowl (that’s what the 1 Teaspoon of oil is for in the recipe) for about an hour or until it doubles in size.

Laminating the dough

This is an amazing technique. I was a bit skeptical that it would work, but it worked perfectly.

Turn your dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out to roughly a 16 by 12 rectangle. Then spread on your softened butter leaving about 1/2 inch around the edges of the dough. Roll up the dough like a cigar!

Then cut the dough roll in half. For each half fold into thirds (think of a business letter – lower left photo). Then pinch the seams around the dough to form a ball. If you wanted you could freeze your dough at this point for future use or return them to your lightly oiled bowl to rise again.

I froze one and used one. For the dough you are using, let it rise a second time in your fridge for 60 minutes. This will get the butter cold which will make the final crust even flakier!

Get it?

Making the Marinara

This is a pretty standard marinara. The one trick they used is to grate the onion using a box grater. This was much harder (and produced many more tears) than just mincing the onion normally. I see their point though. It did make the onion almost melt into the sauce and gave it a great consistency.

To start, melt your butter in a pan over medium-high heat. Then add your onions along with your dried spices and pinch of salt. Let that cook for a few minutes until the onions are slightly browned. Then add your garlic, tomatoes (including juice), and sugar. Bring that to simmer and let it reduce for 25 minutes or so on low heat.

Once it is reduced, stir in your chopped basil and olive oil and ground pepper. Set aside to cool!

Very good sauce!

Making the Pizza!

Get all your toppings ready and preheat your oven to 425 degrees. No need for a pizza stone for this recipe! Then pull your dough ball out of the fridge. Roll it into about a 15 inch diameter circle. Mine was really easy to work with actually.

Add 2 Tablespoons of oil to your cake pan and then add your pizza crust. The oil is really important. It lightly fries the crust which produces a crispy layer on the outside while keeping the inside moist and flaky.

Mush the dough into all the corners of the pan and crimp it around the edges. It’s okay if it isn’t perfect.

Then add about two cups of shredded mozzarella cheese to the bottom, followed by 1.5 cups (or about half) of your marinara sauce. Then add a thin layer of grated Parmesan and dot the top with olives and ricotta cheese.

This part is easy.

Bake this guy at 425 for about 30 minutes. The crust should be golden brown around the edges and the cheese should be melted.

It’ll be hard, but let this cool for 5 minutes before chopping into it!

Chicago. You are onto something. I admit it.

The first piece is kind of hard to get out, but man was this a good piece of pizza. Honestly, I had pretty low expectations and they were completely blown away.

I almost just ate it straight out of the pan.

I still think I might prefer the thin crust variety of pizza over this, but this version at least reminded me how it’s possible to like deep dish pizza.

It put deep dish pizza back in the mix of awesome possibilities. And that’s all you can ever really ask from a recipe!