Pizza | Chickens in the Road

Posts Tagged ‘pizza’

Aug
1

A meal in a skillet–and it’s upside down, just for fun! See how it puffs up when it bakes? Like you did some magic on it. Plus, you get to call it “pizza” and you know how everybody likes that word. And, okay, you don’t have to cook it in an iron skillet, but don’t you want to? It makes me feel like a pioneer and I love feeling like a pioneer. You know, in between checking my email and watching TV. (I have chickens!) I always wanted to be Laura on Little House on the Prairie, have I mentioned that? No? Maybe we shouldn’t go there with this post, or go into my whole David Cassidy obsession. And then there was my Robert Conrad thing… Where was I? Iron Skillet Upside Down Pizza!!!

(Do you feel like you were just inside my head? And wasn’t it scary there?)

How to make Iron Skillet Upside Down Pizza:

1/2 pound ground sausage
1/2 pound ground beef
1/3 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
approximately 2 ounces sliced pepperoni
1 1/2 cups Basic Italian-Style Tomato Sauce or pizza sauce
1 cup shredded mozzarella
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup grated Parmesan

Cook ground sausage and beef in a 10-inch skillet. Drain grease. Add onion, garlic, salt, and Italian seasoning and mix in skillet. Spread pepperoni over meat and onion mixture. Pour on the sauce and top with cheese. In a bowl, combine eggs, milk, salt, and flour. Mix well and spoon over sauce and cheese. (That isn’t a mistake, by the way–no baking powder is required!)

Sprinkle on the Parmesan (and I like to add some extra Italian seasoning here for decoration). Bake in a 400-degree oven for about 20 minutes, till the pizza crust top is golden and puffy! Yum!

You can change this up to whatever suits your taste for your favorite kind of pizza. Add hot peppers or other vegetables. Make it with chicken and bacon. Use different cheeses. The world is your pizza.

And now it’s upside down!

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Posted by Suzanne McMinn | Permalink

Tags: pizza

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Jun
15

I love pizza! But first of all, there is no pizza delivery in the country. There’s takeout pizza at the little store in town, but with three hungry children (two of them being teenage boys), that can get pretty expensive. And seeing as how it takes me about 20 minutes to get to the little store in town, and another 20 minutes to get back, I might as well make it at home.

Homemade pizza is actually a great busy-day dinner. You can shortcut the sauce, either with some Basic Italian-Style Tomato Sauce you might have onhand, or with a jar of storebought sauce. Shortcut the cheese by keeping some pre-shredded mozzarella onhand, too. All it takes after that is slicing up your toppings. The pizza bread itself? That’s the last place you should cut corners because it’s the very foundation of your pizza. Great pizza bread makes great pizza. And you can make great pizza bread in one hour, from starting the dough to sliding the prepared pizza into the oven with this easy pizza dough–another variation on my Hot, Crusty French Bread recipe. (And it’s so easy, even my 12-year-old can make her own pizza!)

*The following recipe makes one pizza if using 16-inch pizza pans. Double, triple, quadruple recipe as needed. If I’m baking four pizzas, I use two bowls and do a double recipe in each bowl.

How to Make Pizza Dough:

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 package yeast
1 cup warm water
salt to taste (I use 3/4 teaspoon)
2 tablespoons olive oil

In a large bowl, combine water with yeast, salt, and olive oil. Let sit for five minutes before beginning to add the flour.

Stir in flour until the dough is stiff enough to knead. Add flour a little at a time. Three cups of flour is approximate; exact amount may vary slightly. Knead dough until smooth and elastic–-just a few minutes. Place dough in a greased bowl; cover. Let rise until doubled. (Using rapid-rise yeast, unless your house is very cold, the rise time should be approximately 30 minutes.)

After dough has risen, roll out directly onto a greased pizza pan, sprinkling flour on top of the dough to keep it from sticking.

I like to use a small plastic cup to roll out pizza dough instead of a rolling pin because the smaller size is easier to manage with the raised edges of a pizza pan.

Before adding any sauce and toppings, bake pizza bread at 400-degrees for about 8 minutes. Take out pizza bread. Add sauce and toppings as desired. Put completed pizza back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes. If I’m baking two at a time, halfway into the baking time I switch the pizzas on the oven racks.

For dessert pizza, use melted butter and a mix of sugar and cinnamon, or add fruit!

Another of my favorite ways to fix pizza is to skip the sauce entirely. I sprinkle olive oil on top of the prepared, pre-baked pizza bread (in place of sauce) then add my toppings. One of my favorite combos when making pizza this way is Swiss cheese, crumbled bacon, and onions and/or peppers. Yum! How about you? What’s your favorite pizza?

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