Pizza Night

I got this awesome pizza recipe from The Fresh Loaf.  I guess it is not so strange that the recipe has roots in Peter Reinhart’s arsenal of help for the home baker (that guy is everywhere).

I got the idea from not wanting to eat what I had planned for dinner.  Earlier in the day I had plopped a whole chicken in the crock pot for a 6 hour roast.  Although it is delicious, it is a meal we have regularly.  All I can say is that creativity comes when you don’t want what you have planned!  I was reading on The Fresh Loaf forum when I stumbled on the Pizza dough recipe and techniques; I ran into the kitchen and whipped up the dough, divided it out, and put it in the refrigerator for a nice slow ferment.

Roasted Chicken and Onion Pizza. Square... the shape of the back of a cookie sheet.

Once the family was home from school, work, and hunkered down for the incoming blizzard (we really got dumped on last night).  I pulled the meat off of the chicken bones, cut it up, grabbed some mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, and some garlic.  I didn’t have any red sauce or any tomatoes to make the sauce suggested in the article so I made sauce-less pizza with some extra virgin olive oil and all-purpose seasoning.

Baked Pizza cooled just enough to pick up and shovel in!

As you can see, the pizza’s are rectangle because I use the back of a cookie sheet as a peel.  My lovely wife bought me a pizza stone for Christmas so I cranked up the oven to 500 (my gas oven only goes up to 550 or I would have gone higher), and slid our non-traditional roasted chicken, onion, garlic, herb pizza directly on the stone (parchment paper and all).  After about 6 or 7 minutes in the hot oven is when the crust had risen around the edges and the cheese melted beautifully.  We had the best time eating while we cooked.

We made an all cheese pizza, an olive oil and parmesan bread stick pizza, and lastly a ham, onion, and cheese pizza.  I had a great time turning a roasted chicken into a family event.  The Mrs. and I even talked about having a regular pizza bake night.  So simple and good.  Bye bye pizza delivery guy.  Unless we’re desperate I don’t think we’ll order pizza again.

Ham and Onion pizza crust was perfect. I sprinkled some cheese out on the edges so it would be visually delicious too.