Valentine’s Day Pizza

Pepperoni, Olive and Broccolini Deep Dish Pizza Recipe

Pepperoni, Olive and Broccolini Deep Dish Pizza

1. Pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees
2. Roll out the dough
3. Spray a round pie pan with canola oil and sprinkle on cornmeal
4. Press the dough into a round pie pan
5.  Pre-bake the dough for 7 minutes
6. Place all the fillings in the pizza: start with layering mozzarella cheese
7. Sprinkle on shredded asiago cheese, sliced Kalamata olives, thinly sliced pepperoni, steamed broccolini, and pizza sauce
8.  Top with parmesan cheese
9. Bake for about 20 minutes

You can use your regular pizza dough recipe to make the dough. I substitute  one cup flour with 1 cup cornmeal for my deep dish pizza and it works great!

Pickle and Banana Pepper Pizza Recipe

Pickle and Banana Pepper Pizza

I was inspired by an article on Slice to put pickles on one of my pizzas, and what better to combine them with but banana peppers? Since they are both pretty juicy I cooked them in a pan before adding them to the pizza. This kept the pizza from getting soggy. After pre-baking the crust I added homemade pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, turkey pepperoni, banana peppers and pickles. The sweet and spicy flavors of the pickles and peppers tasted delicious with the pepperoni.

Spicy Meat Pizza Recipe

Spicy Meat Pizza

Andrew’s little brother has had a football game almost every Saturday this fall so he has been coming over for dinner on Sundays. Meat lovers pizzas are a perfect fit for Tyler’s big appetite.

I started with spicy Italian sausage and turkey pepperoni, a  great combination on any pizza. I put banana peppers on a pizza for a the first time this spring and knew they would be a great compliment for this spicy pizza. Topped with my homemade pizza sauce, onions, and mozzarella cheese, this pizza was excellent and with Tyler as a guest there were no left-overs!

Sausage and Pepperoni Pizza Recipe

I have been making so many pizzas this summer that I haven’t been able to keep up with the blog posts. Andrew’s former student Rob and his girlfriend joined us for dinner in June before they headed off to NYC. Rob is a foodie, but he didn’t have any special requests so I decided to make a Sausage and Pepperoni Pizza and take a second shot at my Barbecue Chicken Pizza.

I think you need more than two types of meat to classify a pizza as meat-lovers so I can’t label this pizza as that, but this one sure tasted great. I used precooked sausage from Wegmans prepared food section and turkey pepperoni. The flavor from the sausage, pepperoni, and mozzarella cheese combined for guest-satisfying first pizza.

The second pizza was the show stopper of the night. Last summer I made a BBQ chicken pizza, but used store bought sauce and red onions. For this pizza I marinated the chicken in homemade sauce. First, I spread on a thin layer of BBQ sauce onto the dough. Then, rather than using mozzarella like last time, I sprinkled on cheddar cheese. Finally, I placed the grilled BBQ chicken on top. The homemade sauce and the cheddar cheese made all the difference. I still prefer onions on my BBQ chicken pizza, but this was still a winner.

Pesto Pepperoni Pizza Recipe

We recently invited Andrew’s students Lauren and Ashley (and Ashley’s boyfriend Scott)  to the house to celebrate the end of the school year. At Ashley’s request I prepared a Buffalo Chicken Wing pizza, but wasn’t sure what to make for the second pizza. Andrew suggested a traditional pepperoni pizza, but I thought it would be fun to combine two pizza from last year into one mouth watering pizza: my Pesto Pizza (#26) and my Pepperoni  Pizza (#52).

I started by spreading homemade pesto sauce on pre-baked dough. Next, I sprinkled on mozzarella cheese and loaded on the pepperoni. The simple nature in which I prepared the pizza did not reflect its taste. It was fantastic! One of my favorite sauces and one of my favorite toppings together to make pesto pepperoni pizza. Delish!

#52: Pepperoni Pizza Recipe 9/12/10

As I was relaxing by the pool in St. Lucia over our December vacation and thinking about starting my 52 Pizzas project, I never imagined that I would make the fifty-second pizza in early September. I prepared a mental list of all the pizzas I hoped to make and of course pepperoni pizza was on the list, but I have been having so much fun creating original pizzas that this one kept getting pushed down my list. Until last weekend, that is when I decided I couldn’t make 52 pizzas and not include my own pepperoni pizza recipe!

When preparing this pizza I reminisced about my first job, at Sbarro, where I learned how to toss pizza dough, spread marinara using a ladle, and the proper arrangement of pepperoni. For my pepperoni pizza recipe I bought Italian style pepperoni that had a red pepper spice to it. I spread marinara sauce on the dough, sprinkled on mozzarella cheese and laid the pepperoni in concentric circles around the pizza. The pizza turned out delicious and was such a simple and satisfying way to end my project.

This has been a great experience. I enjoyed the creative process and the challenge of developing so many new recipes. I am proud that I made my dough from scratch on all 52 pizzas. It has also been fun sharing the process with others. Andrew and I look forward to pizza every week. We have enjoyed pizza with the company of so many family and friends. In addition, it has been tons of fun to share my pizza creations on this blog. I never imagined how many people would be interested in this project when it began. Now that I’ve completed 52 pizzas I am planning my next pizza project and will write about in the next week. Stay tuned!

#43: The Heart Attack Pizza Recipe 8/20/10

All of our guests that have come for pizza have been special guests. But this weeks guests came all the way from Down Under! My Aunt Bev and Uncle Oak are visiting from Australia. They are staying with my parents and I was really looking forward to having them over for pizza. As much as they hate to admit it, Oak and my step-dad Jimmy are like twins. They both love golf, they both love scotch and they both love meat. In planning for their visit I created a new meat lovers pizza recipe: The Heart Attack!

Jim had clearly been disappointed with the lack of spice on the Chorizo pizza I made for him, so tonight I pulled out the big guns. This pizza recipe calls for three meats we had tried before; pepperoni, hot Italian sausage and hot Capicola. And because I love the men in my life, I added Kalamata olives in an attempt to slow their heart attacks. I spread these ingredients atop marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese. This pizza was fantastic! Capicola is such a great topping on pizza and it goes so well with the olives. And luckily there were no heart attacks at dinner, just full bellies.

#20: Imagine RIT Pizza Recipe 4/30/10

Imagine RIT Pizza

Tonight Andrew is doing the final planning for Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival which will be held at Rochester Institute of Technology, Saturday May 1 from 10:00am-5:00pm. As he and several of his right-hand men/women are getting prepped for tomorrow, I was inspired create an Imagine RIT pizza recipe. To represent the colors of the Imagine RIT logo I used white mozzarella cheese, yellow and orange peppers sliced in roundish pieces, and red pepperoni. I then attempted to lay out the toppings in a similar fashion as the logo. This was slightly challenging due to the shape and texture of the toppings, but I think it looks pretty good compared to the image. I’m sure that Andrew and his comrades are in need of a delicious dinner break so I’m off to deliver this Imagine RIT pizza to campus. I hope to see you at the festival!

#5, 6, 7: Party Pizza Recipe 2/6/10

We decided to have some friends over for pizza and other snacks. The next three pizzas were made for that night.

#5 Margherita Pizza

I figured I should make the old stand-by, marinara and cheese. It turned out to be a hit.

#6 Meat Lovers Pizza

This is a pizza I have made for Andrew and I before so I knew it would be great. I used poultry Italian sausage, turkey pepperoni, sautéed onions, marinara and mozzarella cheese. I was right, it was great.

#7 Cheese-less Roasted Veggie Pizza

One of our friends is lactose intolerant, I can’t even imagine because I love cheese so much. I have seen him eat cheese before but I wanted to check with him to see what he could eat. He said melted cheese was the worst, I pity him so much because I love melted cheese the best! I was kind of excited for the challenge of a cheese-less pizza, I have never attempted it before due to my cheese addiction. I roasted red peppers, something I learned to do earlier in the week. I also roasted some onions and sautéed zucchini. I brushed Wegmans basting oil with garlic and herbs on the crust and added the veggies. This pizza turned out to taste great and our lactose intolerant friend was grateful and satisfied with my creation. I was disappointed that the veggies did not stay on the pizza after I sliced it and they fell off when you tried to eat it. The challenge is how do you get the veggies to stay on the pizza without cheese? I will attempt that challenge again sometime.