{Day 3} Pizza!!

This week has been cray busy! I needed a break today so, from the approval of many, I bring to you pizza! :) We make our own pizza dough. Honestly, we mostly just follow the recipe in the bread maker manual (it is one thing I regularly use the bread maker for ... in fact we have pizza every Friday!) but I make some changes. My favourite is to use garlic infused olive oil instead of just regular olive oil ... the hint of garlic in there is amazing, especially for our appetizer pizzas! :) I will also, on occasion, add italian seasoning to the ingredients so it mixes in the dough but this one I will usually only do when we have pizza with a tomato based sauce (a more traditional pizza). Our favourite pizzas are BBQ Chicken (which is on the menu for tonight), Chicken Bacon Ranch, and Farmer's Sausage with Onion! They are fabulous. Here are instructions for them all (but photos only of today's pizzas: BBQ Chicken and the appetizer cheese pizza). We also like thin crust pizza so, the small dough that our bread maker says is sufficient for one pizza we actually split over two pizzas and we get beautiful, crisp thin crusts! :)

BBQ Chicken Pizza

Ingredients:
pizza dough (1/2 recipe if you like thin crust)
BBQ sauce of your choice (our favourites are Cattle Boys or the Club House Wild Whiskey Smoked BBQ)
Chicken cut into 1" pieces and seasoned with Buffalo Wild Wings Chipotle BBQ Fire Roasted seasoning before frying (FYI Buffalo Wild Wings is the absolutely best place to go to eat fabulous wings!)
Mozza cheese
Cheddar cheese

Directions:
Roll out dough and spread on pizza pan (sprinkle corn meal on pizza pan to prevent sticking). Liberally spread your BBQ sauce onto the crust. Then place your chicken over that and top with your mozza cheese and a bit of cheddar to give it some extra zip. Bake as per recommendations of your bread machine but if you're going with a thin crust, 400 F for 20 minutes is good. :)

Chicken Bacon Ranch Pizza

Ingredients:
pizza dough (1/2 recipe for thin crust)
Ranch salad dressing (we prefer the Hidden Valley brand but Kraft is good too)
Chicken cut into 1" pieces and seasoned with salt and pepper before frying)
Green onions, chopped
Real bacon bits
Mozza cheese
Cheddar cheese

Directions:
Roll out dough and spread on pizza pan. Sprinkle corn meal on pizza pan first to prevent sticking. Liberally spread your Ranch dressing over the crust. Sprinkle with most of your mozza cheese. Place your chicken next and sprinkle with green onions and bacon bits. Top with the rest of the mozza cheese and a bit of cheddar for added zip. :) Bake as per recommendations of your bread machine but if you're going with a thin crust, 400 F for 20 minutes is good. :)

Farmer's Sausage and Onion Pizza

Ingredients:
pizza dough (1/2 recipe for thin crust)
BBQ sauce of your choice (though I highly recommend the Wild Whiskey Smoked BBQ for this one)
1-2 farmer's sausages fried up and then cut into small slices
1 onion chopped and fried up in butter
Mozza cheese
Cheddar cheese

Directions:
Roll out dough and spread on pizza pan. Sprinkle corn meal on pizza pan first to prevent sticking. Liberally spread your BBQ sauce over the crust. Give the sausages a quick fry whole (to make cutting them up easier). Remove to a plate, slice up, return to pan to finish frying along with chopped onions. When onions are looking nice and caramelly (I can count that as a word right? :) ) and sausage is fried, removed to a bowl (you can remove some grease if you want but I don't usually). Spread sausage and onion over your pizza. Top with the mozza cheese and a bit of cheddar (cheddar gives it extra zip)! :) Bake as per recommendations of your bread machine but if you're going with a thin crust, 400 F for 20 minutes is good. :)

Appetizer Cheese Pizza

Ingredients:
pizza crust (1/2 recipe for thin crust)
Italian salad dressing (the Kraft Tuscan Italian Olive Oil dressing is best)
Garlic salt
Mozza cheese
Cheddar cheese
Parmesan cheese

Directions:
Roll out dough and spread on pizza pan. Sprinkle corn meal on pizza pan first to prevent sticking. Liberally spread your Italian dressing over the crust. Sprinkle a bit of garlic salt on top of this (more if you didn't put garlic infused olive oil in the crust, less if you did). Top with a good sized amount of mozza cheese, a bit of cheddar and a sprinkle of parmesan. Bake at 400F for 20 minutes. :)

OK, some pictures! And I need to apologize for them. I intended to take photos before we all dug into the deliciousness that is our homemade pizza BUT they are so awesome and everyone was so hungry that we all grabbed some before I could take photos. And I'm pregnant so my memory isn't so great sometimes. :) Anyways, we were almost done the pizza before I remembered to take a photo. :) So you get one photo with both pizzas in it.

The one on the left is the appetizer cheese pizza and the one on the right is the BBQ chicken pizza. :) I'm please to say that there was nothing left by the end of the meal. :)

This is not a typical "bread" so to speak, but as I was reminded earlier today, pizza dough has flour and yeast so we can easily call it bread! :) I hope some of these pizzas intrigue you and that you try them yourselves. Oh! Before I forget, the Farmer's Sausage one is also really nice with a mild Italian sausage in place of the Farmer's Sausage. :)