Buffalo Chicken Pizza

Focaccia Recipe as follows will be your crust
https://whats4dinnerbymarie.blogspot.com/2011/11/focaccia-bread.html

2 cups flour
1 T yeast
1 1/4 cup hot water from tap
1 T olive oil
1/4 t salt

Toppings:
1lb chicken, boneless, cut up into bite-sized pieces (I prefer thigh meat, it doesn't get dry)
Louisiana Hot Sauce (or use your fave!), Alfredo sauce (bottled or fresh)

Mozzarella cheese, shredded
Chopped or crushed fresh garlic
Parsley

Optional:
Blue Cheese dressing

Directions:
Start browning your chicken first thing. Once it is browned, drain fat, allow to cool a bit and drench in hot sauce. Allow to cool.

Preheat oven to 425*

While chicken is cooking, start your dough. Run tap until very hot water comes out. Measure out flour, yeast, and salt. Mix in a large mixing bowl, with a fork. Make a well in the center, pour in the 1 Tablespoon of olive oil, don't mix in. Add the 1 1/4 cup hot water, all at once the olive oil in the center of the flour. Stir with the form, slowly incorporating the flour as it falls into the water in the center of the bowl. Once all the flour is incorporated, turn dough out onto well floured surface. Knead, pulling up flour, until dough is soft and elastic, not sticky, not crumbly. This comes with practice, but it's not hard to know when it's done.

When your dough is ready, move ball of dough onto a lightly oiled pizza pan or stone. I prefer the stone. Pat or roll out dough to the pan edge. Precook dough in oven for ten minutes. Remove from oven to add toppings.

For sauce, I made a simple Alfredo sauce. You can make your own, or use bottled. Spread over dough.

Evenly distribute cooked and sauced chicken to the dough. Cover with mozzarella cheese. Sprinkle garlic over the top, topped with a sprinkle of parsley for color.

Feel free to add any other ingredients that strike your fancy. Adjust cooking time accordingly.

Bake in oven, middle rack for 15 minutes, or until cheese is nicely browned to center of pizza. Slice and enjoy!

 Sauce and chicken on the dough. Next time, I'll shred the chicken smaller. 

 Mozzarella over the top. 

 Chopped garlic. I used three huge cloves. We do like garlic! :)

 Parsley on top for some added color. 

Into the oven for 15 minutes. Watch it closely after 10, to make sure you don't overcook. 

Can you believe there is no final product photo? Well, I took it out, cut it up, called everyone for dinner and the next thing I knew, it was GONE! Sorry folks. I'll add one next time. But believe me, it was scrumptious!

Easy (Faster than Delivery) Homemade Pizza

First of all, I'd like to remind you to look back on my Foccacia recipe. This is the crust of my pizza.

http://whats4dinnerbymarie.blogspot.com/2011/11/foccacia-bread.html

Once you have the crust made, add whatever your favorite toppings are. The pizza I made tonight, I surprised the kids with cheese in the crust (YUM!), Italian Sausage and Black Olive!

To keep it fast, I used jarred pasta sauce. Use what you like. Not too heavy, it will be too wet. You can also make your own quickie pizza sauce by adding basil, oregano, thyme, salt, pepper and a pinch of red pepper to a can of tomato sauce. Again, though, don't put too much on the pizza. I also used Italian sausage that I precooked in a pan and then chopped up. Do NOT put raw meat on a pizza. Any and all meats are precooked. Pepperoni is already cooked. 

I rolled the bread dough out, onto a pizza stone lightly oiled in olive oil, going over the edges. Dough shrinks back, so don't be afraid to roll out farther than the edge. Plus, I wanted extra dough to roll around the string cheese in the crust. After the dough is rolled out, top with sauce, toppings and mozzarella cheese. I also sprinkle a little oregano over the top of the cheese for a little zing.

Bake at 500* for 10 - 15 minutes or until browned and well done. The more toppings, the longer it will need to cook. 

Delivery is what..... 30... 45 minutes?? Super Bowl weekend.... LONGER! 

What a clever idea Pizza Hut came up with when they started putting cheese into the crust. I always thought the crust was the best part anyways, but now, even folks who didn't eat the crust would want to eat it! So string cheese gets rolled into the crust. I only do two sides, not all the way around. You could do it in a round pizza too, just cut slits into cheese so it goes around the curve.

OK, cheese is rolled in there... I really like my rectangular pizza stone. I find it to be more versatile than the round. The round stone limits me to pizza. The rectangular stone can be used for a myriad of items. I usually make my homemade pizza in rectangular shape. If you cook a lot of frozen pizzas, then the round stone will be perfect for you. Pampered Chef has many baking stones and I love them all!! I do have a round stone, but I use it more for biscuits than for pizza.

I've fully cooked my Italian sausage. I sliced it and then chopped it in my handy dandy Pampered Chef chopper.

Ready to sprinkle on pizza.

Poke the crust all over with a fork, to keep it from rising and growing bubbles in the crust. Spread spaghetti sauce on top. Not too much. It will soggy up your crust.

Add toppings. Here I'm sprinkling my chopped sausage on top.

Black Olives on top of sausage and now the mozzarella cheese. I would add pepperoni too. That's the only thing I like to put on top of the cheese as opposed to underneath. But, no pepperoni tonight. Someone ate the whole package last night! :O

A little sprinkle of oregano and it's ready for the oven. 500 degrees for 10 - 15 minutes depending on your toppings.

Start checking after 10 minutes. It's starting to brown, but not all over. I turned the pizza around, front to back, so it would brown evenly and back into the oven.

13 minutes and it's all done!

YUM!!

Join us? There's plenty! Can you spot the cheese inside the crust edge? 

Jonathan the cheese monster was pleased!!

Just for kicks, here are a few of our delicious pizzas over time.

Focaccia Bread

3 cups flour
1 Tablespoon yeast
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1.25 cup hot tap water

Optional toppings:
S&P
Parmesan
garlic
rosemary
***************************
Preheat oven to 400*

In a large mixing bowl, I mix together flour, yeast and oil. Add hot water all at once and mix with a fork. Once it seems you've picked up as much of the flour as you can, use your hands to pull the ball of dough together and it will start to feel a bit sticky and will pick up any remaining flour from the bowl. Don't overwork the dough. This is not a kneading kind of bread. This is super fast, maybe ten minutes start to finish. 

Once the dough is mixed, plop onto oiled baking stone or pizza pan. My pizza stone is 10 X 13 inches. 
Don't roll or stretch dough. Just push it into shape. Once it's covering the stone, pour a bit of olive oil onto it, brush it or spread it with your hand. To that add any of the optional ingredients your family enjoys. This time, I added sea salt, course ground pepper, rosemary and grated Parmesan. 

For those who are thinking this looks a lot like pizza, it sure does. Feel free to use this simple recipe for your pizza crust. :)

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, or until the cheese starts to brown. Remember, this is not mozzarella cheese. It will not bubble up and brown that deeply. Don't over cook for Focaccia or it'll be ultra crispy. 

There's not much to this. Flour, yeast, oil and water...  

Preheat the oven.

Flour and yeast.

And a little olive oil.

While I'm getting the flour out, the hot water is running to get as hot as it can. Get the water and pour it right into the flour, all at once.

Remember, water goes in all at once, before you start mixing.

Get your fork moving. This won't take but a minute.

The pizza stone needs to be oiled. If you haven't already done this, do it before you pull the dough out of the bowl.

If you'd like to keep your hands clean, use a pastry brush. Don't worry, you'll have other opportunities to get hands into the dough.

This is the best I could do with the fork. Now it's time to get the dough out with your hand. 

See all the four on the bottom of the bowl? It needs to get picked up by the ball of dough.

30 seconds later it's all up. Nothing more than pushing the dough into the bowl as I turned it around and it picks it all up as it gets a bit sticky.

Put the ball of dough onto the oiled stone, flattening it down.

Continue to flattened it out, pushing it towards the edges of the stone as you work it.

All the way to the edges. Since this dough has not had a chance to rise, it will not shrink back from the edges once you stop pushing on it. So, don't go over the edges. You don't want it to burn. 

Olive oil on top. 2-3 tablespoons should be plenty. Add a little at a time so you don't drown your dough.

Spread it around nicely, but not over the edges. If it drips onto the oven floor it's smoke and creates a mess.

A nice light coating. Not too much. You just want to hold on your toppings, not drip off your elbows as you eat it.

Sea Salt. Not too much, we aren't making pretzels...

Course ground black pepper

I like rosemary on my focaccia. But you don't want your family choking down pine needles on their bread. I give mine a quick twist with mortar and pestle.

Nicely broken up.

Ground, but not too fine.

Now, the final touch. Shredded Parmesan Cheese.

All covered. Now, into the oven.

After 20 minutes, it's out! :) Smells GOOD!

Slicing it into strips like bread sticks rather than into squares like pizza.

Nice hot bread to go with your favorite steaming soup! :)