My family, like every other red blooded family in America,
loves pizza. Thankfully, we now live in
an area where we can pizza delivered when mama doesn’t feel like cooking. But….we used to live where you couldn’t get
anyone to deliver a pizza. It was like
torture. How is it possible in this day
and age to live somewhere in the USA and not be able to get pizza
delivered? I asked myself that question frequently.
Since I couldn’t have someone bring my lazy butt a pizza, I
had to make my own. Yes, I could have
driven down the mountain and picked one up, but re-read the first sentence of
this paragraph. Yep, lazy. Too lazy to drive anywhere.
On the bright side, I got pretty good at making pizza. Don’t get too excited…I don’t make my own
crust or anything. My Raley’s has fresh
pizza dough that you can buy. It is
great! It the perfect size and couldn’t
be easier. Today I am going to show you
how to make two of my favorites….a stuffed crust pizza and a Roasted Garlic
White Pizza. Yum!
I will start with my stuffed crust pizza. I rolled out my pizza dough first. And I didn’t do such a hot job, but with
homemade pizza….shape isn’t that important.
As you can see from the picture above, I am using string
cheese to stuff m crust. It is the
perfect thing to use. I cut each piece
in half lengthwise and then in half across.
String cheese is the perfect shape, I had it on hand, and it
melts beautifully. This really is the
easiest way to make stuffed crust pizza.
I used a smidge of water to seal the edges after I flipped
the edges of the dough over the cheese.
For this pizza, I just topped it with pizza sauce and
mozzarella cheese. This one was for my
kids and they love plain cheese pizza.
Kids are really boring.
This baked up perfectly!
Although you can see one part on the top where the string cheese leaked
out….no biggie.
Yummers! The kids
love when I make this.
See the cheese in there?
Like I said above, string cheese really is the perfect cheese to use
here. This makes the pizza so much more
exciting. Yep, it doesn’t take much to
excite me.
On to my white pizza…..
I started by roasting a whole head of garlic. I cut the top off, placed it on foil,
drizzled it with olive oil, salt and pepper, and then I wrapped the whole thing
up in a big foil ball. I roasted this
for 30 minutes on 400.
Once the garlic was roasted, I squeezed it out of the shell
(that doesn’t sound right…the head?) and mixed it with a container of ricotta
cheese. I also added a smoosh more salt
and pepper.
Once again, I imperfectly rolled out a pizza crust. This time, I smeared a little olive oil on
the top and popped this in the oven for a few minutes to brown the crust up. This is different than my stuffed crust pizza
which didn’t cook until AFTER it had its toppings.
Once the crust came out of the oven, I spread the
ricotta/garlic mixture all over. Then, I
placed fresh mozzarella strategically over the top. I say “strategically” because I really do
want prime melty cheese coverage.
Next came tomatoes and parmesan cheese.
I baked this, again, for just a few minutes. I just wanted to melt the cheese this time.
Once the pizza was done, I topped it with some basil.
These recipes helped me through the dark days of no pizza
delivery. I hope they can help you too;)
Roasted Garlic White Pizza
One ball of pizza dough
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 head of garlic, roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper
15 ounces ricotta cheese, part skim
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
8 ounces fresh mozzarella
2 tomatoes, sliced
¼ cup parmesan cheese
¼ cup basil, torn
Preheat oven to 425 degrees, or follow directions for
pre-heating on your pizza dough’s package.
Roll out pizza dough to desired shape. Place on lightly oiled pizza pan. Drizzle remaining oil over the top of the
crust. Bake at 425 for 11 minutes.
Mix ricotta cheese with roasted garlic, salt and pepper. Smear over baked crust. Top with mozzarella, tomatoes, and parmesan
cheese. Bake for an additional 5 minutes
at 425.
Top baked pizza with basil.
Serves 4-6
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