BBQ Pulled Pork Pizza

This is what I call a masterpiece! BBQ Pulled Pork in a pizza; especially since pizza is my favorite food of all time. You can do anything with a pizza with any kind of toppings. Here we used leftover pulled pork and homemade BBQ sauce to make this pizza. It was so good. It was my first attempt at grilling a pizza and it failed. Only because the BBQ ran out of propane and smoked a lot while it was cooking for the short time that it did. It was finished in the oven on the pizza stone. But, it was still yummy!

First, I made a basic pizza dough (any favorite dough will do, my recipe is as follows after the picture). Nothing fancy as I did not want it to overpower everything on the pizza.

Basic Pizza Dough:
3 1/4 cups flour
1 packet of active dry yeast
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup warm water (about 120-130 degrees)
2 Tbsp olive oil

In a bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, yeast, and salt. Add water and oil. Beat with electric mixer on low until all incorporated. Add flour 1/2 cup at a time and beat with dough hooks until as much of the flour is incorporated and a dough is formed. Turn out onto lightly floured surface and knead in any extra flour remaining until you get an elastic consistency, keeping surface floured while kneading so it doesn't stick. Put into a greased bowl and let rise with a kitchen towel over the top until double. Punch down and divide in half. Let rest 10 minutes. Form your pizza crust. Bake for about 5 minutes at 400 degrees so it does not rise anymore. At this point, the other crust can be packaged to be frozen for use later if needed. It is always good to have pizza crust on hand.

The toppings I used for this BBQ Pulled Pork Pizza is:
- fresh pineapple
- black olives
- fresh chopped spinach
- 3 cheeses (mozzarella, cheddar, and parmesan)

First, put on some BBQ sauce on the crust, as thick or thin as you want. It just depends on how saucy you want your sauce. Click here for my favorite BBQ sauce recipe

Then, you spread on the leftover BBQ pulled pork over the sauce. You can make this as thick or as thin as you want. It also depends on how much leftover you have, in this case, we had a lot of leftover because it was a large pork shoulder roast.

Next, I put on the fresh pineapple and black olives...

Then, it was a thin layer of mozzarella cheese and the chopped spinach...

And then, the rest of the cheese with the parmesan on the very top.

So now that the pizza is built, it is time for the grill (or so I thought) I preheated the grill outside. I put the pizza on the pizza stone (since I was told that it was good to use the pizza stone if I did not want the whole bottom charred, which I didn't since I am not that fond of charred bread products) and took it outside and put it on the grill.

However, just about 5 minutes into the cooking... all the flames went out and it was smoking so badly, I thought I was just going to turn it off anyway and bring it into the house. But it helped that the grill also ran out of propane. Just my luck! I cleaned the grill really good too before putting on the pizza which led me to believe that it was below the grill that needed the cleaning. So, to make a long story short... I finished the pizza in the oven in the house. I baked it at 400 degrees for another 10 minutes and it was done and so yummy! Although the crust was a little crispier than I would have liked, but it was still good! Check this out...

And this...

And finally this one...

It was so good! We ate the whole thing! Just me and the kids... dang, we must have been hungry.. I will have to make this again when Cooking Dad is home, he was out on the road, I almost felt guilty of eating all of it. Almost. But, not quite. Now it is your turn, go and make the best grilled pizza you can but remember this: Make sure your grill is clean inside and out, and that it has propane!

"In The Bag" Broccoli Blue Cheese Focaccia Pizza

"In The Bag" is a round-up event sponsored by Real Epicurean for the month of May 2009. Each month 2-3 ingredients are chosen and the participants have to use the ingredients in a dish of their choosing. This month the ingredients chosen are broccoli and blue cheese. The dish of my choosing for this round-up is Broccoli Blue Cheese Focaccia Pizza. Pizza is my favorite dish of all time and so I thought it only fitting that I chose pizza.

I didn't want to make just a standard crust and then it hit me... Focaccia Crust. I thought this would make a better tasting pizza since I used a Basil Garlic Focaccia as my crust. It was very easy to make and I amazed myself on how tender the bread was.

For my sauce, I decided on a parmesan white sauce which is similar to an alfredo sauce just not as thick. I found this in my Simply Delicious by Ron Kalenuik cookbook. It is a classic Mornay Sauce. Very tasty and would make a great base for other pasta or pizza sauces. The only thing I did differently is I added just a tad bit of garlic and basil to the sauce.

So, now here are the recipes and what I used to top my Broccoli Blue Cheese Focaccia Pizza. Makes a wonderful meal as we had it with green salad.

Broccoli Blue Cheese Focaccia Pizza
Focaccia Crust: (adapted from recipe #27968 on RecipeZaar I changed a couple of ingredients around and omitted a couple just so I could have the basil garlic flavor I was looking for, just click on the RecipeZaar link to see the actual recipe)

2 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp white sugar
1 packet active dry yeast
1 tsp granulated garlic
1 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup warm water (between 105-115 degrees)
2 Tbsp olive oil (for brushing on before baking)

Mix the yeast and water in a small bowl. Let proof for 10 minutes (until bubbles begin to form). In a large bowl, stir together flour, salt, sugar, garlic, basil, and black pepper. Add the yeast mix and 1 Tbsp olive oil to the dry ingredients and combine. When dough has pulled together, turn out onto lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic.

Lightly oil a large bowl, place dough in bowl, and turn to coat with oil. Cover with damp cloth and let rise in warm place 25 minutes. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Punch down dough, place on greased baking sheet. Pat dough to 1/2 inch thick rectangle. Using your knuckle, make indentations int he dough about 1/2 inch apart , then prick down with fork. Brush with 2 Tbsp olive oil. Bake for 13-15 minutes or until golden brown.


Parmesan Cream Sauce (from recipe for Mornay Sauce in Simply Delicious by Ron Kalenuik)
3 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups chicken broth
1 1/4 cups half & half cream
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbsp chopped fresh basil

Heat the butter in the sauce pan. Add flour and cook 2 minutes over low heat. Stir in the chicken broth and cream. Reduce heat and simmer until thickened. Stir in cheese, garlic, and basil. Simmer for 2 more minutes. Top the focaccia pizza crust with sauce within 1/2 inch from edges.

The Toppings:

1 roma tomato, diced
1/2 lb broccoli florets, chopped
1/2 cup blue cheese, crumbled
1/2 cup black olives
1 small purple onion, sliced
6 oz cooked chicken
2-3 fresh basil leaves, chopped
1 cup mozzarella cheese

On top of the sauced crust apply mozzarella cheese, then add chicken, then tomatoes, purple onions, and olives. Add the broccoli florets. Crumble blue cheese on top and then top with chopped basil. On center rack in oven, broil on low for 10 minutes or until cheese is melted and top is golden brown. Cut into squares and serve.

Talk about yummy! The kids really ate it up, they love pizza and veggies so I figured this would be a hit with them. It is a one pan meal since it has the meat, the grain (as in bread), and lots of vegetables on top. We still had a green salad on the side as well. A successful dinner was had by all!




Thank you Scott at Real Epicurean for letting me participate for the first time ever in something like this. It was fun, I discovered some new ingredients that go great together. Always room to learn something new every day!

Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza

The other night I was watching Throwdown with Bobby Flay and he was making Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza. I had a sudden craving for some right now. I tried and tried to make a dough comparable to what I had seen on TV but I could not get it right after many attempts so I finally broke down and used a recipe from a great site I found. The site is Pizza Making.com and this recipe I used is an adaptation from Pizzeria Uno in Chicago. It turned out wonderful and the whole family loved it. I am not going to post the actual recipe as you can click to the exact page where I got my recipe from and print it out yourself. It is very good, although time consuming but well worth the wait. But here are the pictures of the steps I did to get my wonderful pizza. I made a classic cheese and sausage and olive version since the dough recipe does make a lot of dough.

This is step 1 after making the dough, you have to form it into the pan and up the sides. The dough is very pliable and so this is very easy to do.



Then you add the cheese slices. We just used a basic mozzarella cheese.



With the classic cheese, next you would add the sauce like we did here. If you are making it with additional toppings, you would add them here before the sauce. Later after the classic cheese, we made another pizza and added Italian sausage and olives.



Then bake in the oven at a high temperature, we baked at 475 degrees for about 35 minutes. The crust inside stays very soft and fluffy while it gets crispy on the outside and is just wonderful to hold all that topping within the pizza. Notice how the crust gets a nice golden brown and the sauce should be a little bubbly.



Then take it out and top it with some parmesan cheese. I used a shredded fresh parmesan rather than what you shake out of a can and it was more flavorful. Serve right away. But, be careful as this is going to be very hot!