Recipe #20: Tomato-Basil Pizza

Recipe: Tomato-Basil Pizza
Source: The Pioneer Woman Cooks
Time: 1 hr 20 minutes (if pizza crust is not made beforehand)
Ease: 4
Taste: 8
Leftover Value: 5
Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep in the Strainer 

Pioneer Woman's pizza crust, you might remember, was recipe #13 where it was used to make calzones.  Delicious, delightful calzones.  I remembered having some issues in the past with PW's pizza crust but the challenge required me to remake even recipes that I had made before, so I erased my mind of all preconceived notions towards this dough and pressed onward.

The issue I had before with the dough was that once you get a hole in the dough, you are pretty much stuck with that hole unless you gather it all back into a ball and try again.

That's a bit annoying.

After I cautiously dealt with this issue, I remembered the next problem I had--the dough doesn't exactly fit a baking sheet, even though I use the same exact kind that PW uses.  I stretched it out as much as I could, but after five or ten minutes of negotiating tray space with dough, I grew bored.

I suppose since this is a variation of PW's pizza she didn't think measurements were necessary.  Again, I live for measurements.  Also, she uses prepared pesto, so don't fault me for not making my own.

Although, admittedly, I have already faulted myself.

Once the dough has been pressed to a size you are happy with, the hardest part is over.

And the fun can begin!

Since PW didn't say whether or not to use the entire jar of pesto, or what size to use, I might have gotten a little carried away with the pesto as I smeared it all over the dough.

But then again, it's pesto.  Can you ever have too much?

Do you know why I think I really loved this pizza?

Because it is Christmas colored!

Are you ready?  Only 46 days left!

The key to great homemade pizza is an oven set at 500 degrees.  Any lower and the crust of the dough will start to burn without achieving the perfect crispness to the underside.

This pizza was absolutely perfect.  It's a nice change from a typical tomato sauce and cheese pizza.  The only issue I experienced was this:

I'm not sure if oil from the excessive amount of pesto I used splattered out and caused this, or if it was due to buffalo chicken bites that were crisping on the rack above the pizza.

Regardless, the flavor was not affected and the pizza, and my buffalo chicken bites, were fabulous.

Recipe #13 and #14: Pizza Crust and Cowboy Calzones

Recipe: Pizza Crust
Source: The Pioneer Woman Cooks
Time: 1 hr 10 min (or longer, dough can be refrigerated for up to 2 days)
Ease: 1
Taste: 8
Leftover Value: No leftovers! (But again, dough can be make ahead of time and will keep for 2 days)
Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep it in the Strainer!

Recipe: Cowboy Calzone
Source: The Pioneer Woman Cooks
Time: With pre-made dough, 50 minutes
Ease: 7
Taste: 9
Leftover Value: 8
Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep it in the Strainer!

I'll be using this dough a few more times as I cook through The Pioneer Woman Cooks when I make her two different pizzas, so I'll learn quickly if this dough is versatile enough to be used for pizza and calzones.

So far, it's a winner.

Any dough stacked with ingredients or too many steps isn't worth making.  This dough is simple, taking under ten minutes to mix together.

Just be prepared to wait an hour before you can begin making your calzones.

Then the dough will look all puffy like this:

About a half hour through the wait time is when you'll want to begin making the meat for the calzones.

Unless you're smart and make your dough ahead of time.

Unlike me.

The meat mixture is so easy, and as it begins to combine you will want to scoop it from the pan and eat it right there.

But wait, because there is an equally as tempting cheese mixture to be combined next.

The meat mixture should cool a little before being combined with the cheese mixture, I assume to keep the cheese from instantly melting.  I used this time to start separating my dough into eight portions for my calzones.

This part was the most difficult, and perhaps that is because these weren't a typical calzone in the Italian sense of a calzone.

The calzones I've always enjoyed have been as big as half of a pizza.  Though these were obviously smaller, after rolling out the dough according to the specifications, it felt like I was over packing them with meat.  In the end, I still had leftover meat in the bowl.*

*It didn't go to waste since my garbage disposal brother, Joel, was over to enjoy these for lunch.

They felt especially large when I closed them up.  I expected the dough to stick a little to the table (even though I floured it beforehand) or start to rip apart when I picked up each calzone so I used a spatula to pick them up.

But they lifted fairly easy.

The next problem I ran into was that I could only fit 2-3 on a pan.  I'm still working on a solution for that problem.

If you like a crisper shell, you'll want to bake these for longer than the 12-15 minutes baking time.  We were pretty hungry so the first six calzones were devoured without a golden brown crisp about them.

Regardless, the dough wasn't too doughy and the center was piping hot and delicious.

I might have been just a little too excited to get a great picture.  PW doesn't say to serve these with any sauce, but it seemed like a necessity to me.