Pizza Night!

I’d love to brag that I make my own pizza dough. I used to, until pizza night became an every Friday occurrence and we had a couple of kiddos to slow my dough making self down. Once in a blue moon I make my own dough. I’d share the recipe, but I’d have to dig it up from wherever I last stuffed it. Sometimes I use those little packets of pizza crust mix. You know, the kind that you just add water. But really, my new and improved favorite is the Pillsbury Thin Crust Pizza Crust. I make my pizza on a jelly roll pan, so this product is the perfect shape and amount of dough to easily press onto my pan. Here’s how I begin:

I prepare the pan by smoothing on a generous coat of oil (olive or vegetable). Then I sprinkle the pan with a little garlic salt, rosemary, and Parmesan. Now I’m ready to unroll and smoosh (technical culinary term) the dough to fit the pan. Depending on the crust that I'm using, I sometimes pre-bake the crust for up to 8 minutes at 425 degrees.
While the crust is baking, I ready my other ingredients. Chop onions, slice mushrooms, fry up some bacon....whatever prep work that needs to be finished.

Next I top the dough with about 3/4 cup of pizza sauce. Not everyone in our house enjoys the same toppings, so I actually divide the pizza up into sections and family members can top their section to their taste.















Me, I like ham, mushroom, olives, onions…. make that lots of onions, and Italian sausage or bacon if we’ve got it on hand. My husband is the pepperoni guy. The more the better. For a while I switched it to turkey pepperoni, but he busted me last weekend when he read the package, so we’re back to regular old artery-clogging pepperoni. He’s also a fan of banana peppers on his pizza. Our little one prefers just cheese or a little ham and cheese. This week the ham smelled suspect, so she got pepperoni too. This little “plain” section raises a caution flag, because if the rest of the pizza is heavily topped and one section is not, then that little section tends to cook (burn) faster than the rest. We now have a little pizza pan to make the plain cheese pizza (not pictured tonight). Luckily, the baby is not so picky. We just make sure we don’t give her anything too spicy.
















Now we top with cheese. This is just plain shredded mozzerella. I really like provolone or an Italian blend as well. This week, mozzerella was on sale, so it's good ol' mozzerella tonight.
















Finally, just follow the directions on the pizza crust container. I bake mine an additional 6-11 minutes once the toppings are in place.

And ta-dah:
















Cool a little.

Cut .

Enjoy.

TGIF, right?