Stuffed Pizza Rolls

They're like pizza....but more fun.

And you have to decide if that is worth it to you. On the particular day that I made the stuffed pizza rolls it wasn't worth it to me. It wound up being an emotional breakdown, and my kids didn't really think the pizza rolls were that fun. BUT that being said you could do it a lot easier than I did...I made my own roll dough, made my own sauce and had to chop up ham (which I somehow got ham instead of canadian bacon...?), plus I had PMS. But in the end they were delicious and "fun" and the options for different fillings/dipping sauces are endless.

* a good tip for pizza is that if you use a block of mozzerella instead of preshredded your cheese will melt better. Again, I only had shredded which made it a big fat mess : )

BUT They were delicious, Blaine loved them, and for Pete's Sake they were FUN!

Got this recipe from ourbestbites.com

Stuffed Pizza Rolls

1 roll refrigerated pizza dough (or make your own)

pizza sauce (or make your own)

2T grated parmesan cheese

1T olive oil or melted butter

1/2 t garlic powder

1t dried italian seasoning

mozzerella cheese

pizza toppings of your choice: ie, ham and pineapple, pepperoni, sausage, etc.

Preheat the oven to the heat specified on the pizza dough package (usually abt 400dgs).

Unroll your pizza dough onto a lightly floured surface. Pat or roll the dough so it is about 8". Cut the dough into about 24 squares with a pizza cutter (again, if I had a pizza cutter this thing would have been easier...just sayin).

Place cheese and desired toppings on each square (not the sauce!)....you are making dough ball things so you can dip them in the sauce later : ) Just place enough toppings on each square so you have enough dough left to make a ball. When all of your dough squares have cheese and toppings on, carefully lift up each sqaure and wrap the dough around the toppings. Pinch to make sure each ball is sealed shut and then place them seam side down in a lightly sprayed pie pan (or similar dish).

Brush the tops of the dough balls with olive oil or melted butter, then sprinkle with garlic and italian seasonings and top with parmesan cheese (or in lieu of all that you can use garlic bread seasoning).

Cook for 15-20 minutes until golden brown on top. You may want to check after 10 minutes since cooking times will vary!

Serve with your warm pizza sauce, and relish in how fun of a mom you are.

I am so fun. For the love, use refrigerated dough and a pizza slicer and a block of mozzerella, you will be happier : ) And maybe wait till you are not having PMS.

Pizza Sauce!

You may have noticed that I am a saucy person. I can't get enough sauce! It's especially true with pizza. If I am ever the one to call and order our family pizza I order it with extra sauce, and then Blaine doesn't speak to me the rest of the night (I married a not saucy person, the shame!). Anyway, I made some stuffed pizza rolls a few weeks ago and made my own sauce to go with them and it was SO easy and SO tasty !

Pizza Sauce

by: Ourbestbites.com

1 6oz can tomato paste

6oz water (use the empty tomato paste can)

3 Tbs garlic bread seasoning

1 Tbsp sugar or honey (I used sugar!)

3/4 t onion powder

1/4 t red pepper flakes

Empty tomato paste into a bowl and add water a few tablespoons at a time, stirring continuously until combined. Add remaining ingredients, stir to combine, and allow to stand until ready to use.

Enjoy!

Chicken Artichoke Calzones

I got this recipe from a posting made on Kayla's other cool recipe blog (www.recipemamas.blogspot.com. They were definitely a crowd pleaser.

We had these for dinner tonight and they were SO GOOD and so easy. Easier still if you had some leftover chicken, which we never ever have.

Pizza dough (I doubled this recipe and made 4 honkin big calzones)
shredded mozzarella cheese
cooked chicken (I just boiled some)
pesto
chopped artichoke hearts (I bought a giant jar at Costco, anyone have any other atrichoke heart recipes for me to try??)
olive oil (for brushing)

Preheat oven to 500. Put cookie sheet (or pizza stone, if you're fancy) in while it preheats. Divide pizza dough in half and roll into 7 or 8 inch circle. Spread each with pesto, stopping about 1/2 inch from the edge. Add mozzarella, chicken and chopped artichoke hearts to one half. Fold other half over and fold edges over to seal. Transfer to hot cookie sheet, brush with oil, and bake for 13-15 minutes

Pesto Pizza w/ Pinenuts and Feta

I finally made a pizza that wasn't a total disaster! I think part of it is that I always make pizzas on a cookie sheet and they always get kind of soggy. Whatever : )

This was seriously the best pizza I've ever made, and possibly the best one I've ever eaten!

1 batch pizza dough
1 1/2 cups shredded chicken (I used the Lemon Garlic Chicken)
Pesto
4 oz feta cheese
1/2 red onion, cut in slivers
1-2 large tomatoes sliced (I used grape tomatoes cut in half)
Shredded mozzarella (to your liking)
Toasted pine nuts (to your liking)

Preheat pizza stone (I preheat my oven and pizza stone at 475 degrees for at least 45 minutes before baking the pizza so the stone is nice and hot). Roll out prepared pizza dough and place on pizza peel (or on pizza pan if you aren't baking it on a pizza stone). Top pizza dough with the pesto, spreading liberally to outer edges of dough. Layer on additional toppings to your liking (I like to reserve some of the toppings and put them on top of the final layer of cheese) and bake for 8-10 minutes until nicely browned.

I have no pizza stone, so I baked on a cookie sheet for like 13 minutes and used this crust recipe!

3 cups flour, more or less
1 tablespoon honey, heaping
1 tablespoon oil, heaping
1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon yeast
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. (If using a pizza stone, let stone heat for at least 30 minutes in the oven before baking pizza.) Mix all pizza dough ingredients together, except the flour. Add flour and knead for a bit then put into pan (or use a pizza peel and pizza stone). If baking in a sheet pan, bake for about 12 minutes (checking often) until crust is browned and cheese is golden and bubbly. If baking on the preheated pizza stone, slide pizza onto stone and bake for about 8 minutes. Makes 1 large pizza.

Chicken Artichoke Pesto Calzones

We had these for dinner tonight and they were SO GOOD. This recipe is going on The List of Foods We Need to Eat Frequently. Definitely good enough for company. I might even give it 4 stars.

Pizza dough (I used my favorite recipe and got 2 calzones out of it)
shredded mozzarella cheese
cooked chicken (I used leftover from this recipe)
pesto
chopped artichoke hearts (I used about half of one of the little jars from our local grocery store..they come packed in oil and seasoned and are goooood)
olive oil (for brushing)

Preheat oven to 500. Put cookie sheet (or pizza stone, if you're fancy) in while it preheats. Divide pizza dough in half and roll into 7 or 8 inch circle. Spread each with pesto, stopping about 1/2 inch from the edge. Add mozzarella, chicken and chopped artichoke hearts to one half. Fold other half over and fold edges over to seal. Transfer to hot cookie sheet, brush with oil, and bake for 13-15 minutes.

Recipe adapted from here by here.

Almond Streusel Cream Cheese Dessert Pizza

Some friends invited us over for dessert and games one night last week and I decided I really wanted a cream cheese danish. But I'm not brave enough to just dive in to making laminated dough at this stage of my baking career so this is what I came up with instead. I've made it a few times now for various groups of people and everyone loves it. It is gooooood.

Dough:

Same pizza dough and process I blogged about here. But I've recently discovered that my bread maker has a dough cycle which makes my life a really happy place to be. Throw in all wet ingredients plus salt, add flour, make a well and pour in yeast. Turn on dough cycle and ignore for an hour and a half. I'm note sure if it's the additional kneading or what but it makes a slightly softer crust that we really like. Either way, it's still the easiest pizza dough I've found.



Cream Cheese topping (makes enough for 2):

2 8 oz packages cream cheese, softened
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 c sugar
1 egg yolk

Combine all, beat until fluffy.



Streusel (also makes enough for 2):

3/4 c flour
1/4 c packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
6 T butter, room temperature

Mix dry ingredients. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or 2 knives until it fine crumbs form. Use hands to squeeze into larger clumps.




Assembly:

Roll out pizza dough to desired thickness. Spread with half of cream cheese mixture (I've been storing the other half in the fridge for 24-48 hours between baking sessions and it still turns out fine). Sprinkle with streusel mixture and sliced almonds. Bake at 350 for 22-26 minutes. Slice into wedges or breadstick type strips. If you want, when it has cooled a bit you can drizzle it with a powdered sugar glaze (a little bit of milk beat with a lot of powdered sugar). It's best served warm.

Even though it would probably be fine left out on the counter, I've been storing it in a tupperware in the fridge since I'm not really sure. 20 seconds in the microwave makes for a lovely warm morning snack :)

BBQ chicken pizza

This is from a book called "Dinner, it's in the bag" by Christine Vanwagonen. She just got called to the general relief society and she wrote this book of recipes to help you cook from your food storage. so the first time i made this i made it how it was written and the second time i did mostly fresh stuff and it was amazing both ways- the smell of canned chicken gets to me, but it tasted pretty much the same as the fresh chicken. I give it four stars!

Pizza Dough
3 1/2 cups white unbleached flour
1T salt
1T sugar
2T active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water (no more than 105 degrees)
3T extra virgin olive oil

-In a large mixing bowl, wisk together the flour, salt and sugar.
-In the 1 1/2 cups of warm water, dissolove the 2 rounded Tablespoons of yeast, stir well. Let rest for 5 min- then add olive oil
-Pour yeast mixture into the flour, salt and sugar. Stir withe wooden spoon until dough forms a ball. The dough will be sticky.
-Turn the dough onto a heavily floured board. Gently add flour as you begin to knead the dough. Continue adding flour until the dough stops stickingto your hands (this will take about 10 min)
-Form the dough into a ball
-pat entire ball with olive oil
-place in bowl and cover with cotton cloth, place in a warm place for 20-30 min. Remove it from the bowl and punch it dowm on a floured board and reform into ball, put back in bowl for another 20 min
-preheat oven for 45 min at 500 degrees (warming the pizza stone if you want good results)
-separate the dough into 2 balls for 2 large pizzas or 3 balls for three medium pizzas.


ingredients for the toppings

1-2 (14oz can) chicken
1 bottle BBQ sauce (sweet baby ray's is my favorite kind)
1 small bag of pregrated pizza cheese (parmesean, romano, and asiago grated cheese)
1 (8oz) can pineapple tidbits
1 1/2 T dried onion (I used fresh red onion which added nice flavor)
2 T dried Cilantro

-Reconstite onion with 1/4 cup water.
-in a ziplock bag, combine chicken and 2/3 cup of BBQ sauce. Refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours.
-Pour off marinade
-Sprinkle cheese over crust
-spoon 2/3 cup of the bbq sauce over the cheese. top with the chicken, onion, and pineapple tidbits. sprinkle more cheese on top.
-bake for 8 min at 500 degrees. sprinkle with cilantro.


Now like i said this was delicious either way, but I made it with fresh chicken last time and so i just cooked the chicken then added the bbq sauce for the last 5 min of cooking. I didnt have any marinade to pour off though. so i didn't do that. I also added fresh mushrooms and next time i am going to put precrumbled bacon on it too. and like i said, i would recommend red onions- cut up into really small pieces, i also left off the cilantro. this was sooo good though, and i even let the kids make their own pizza and they loved that.

Adams Family Friday night Pizza

1 cup warm water

1 tbsp white sugar

1 yeast packet or 2 1/2 tsp of yeast

1 tsp salt

2 tsp oil

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 1/2 - 1 3/4 cups white flour

This recipe makes one large pizza. This is easily doubled, tripled... except 1 yeast packet will do for two pizzas. I just add 1/2 tsp more yeast per pizza.

By hand: Start by dissolving sugar in hot water in large bowl. When the water feels like comfortable bath water - add yeast. Let stand until yeast is dissolved and kind of bubbly - about 2 minutes. Then add oil and salt. Stir in 1 cup wheat flour, then one cup white. Knead last 1/2 -3/4 cup flour into dough with floured hands. The dough ball should be nice and soft.

Stand Mixer: Start by dissolving sugar in hot water in your mixing bowl. When the water feels like comfortable bath water - add yeast. Let stand until yeast is dissolved and kind of bubbly about 2 minutes. Then add oil and salt. Mix on low with dough hooks and add in flour a cup at a time (wheat first), keep adding flour until soft dough ball pulls away from sides and forms a nice ball (about 2 1/2 cups total). Stop mixing and remove dough hooks and reshape into dough ball.

The rest: Take dough ball and set in bowl with plastic wrap on top in a warm area to rise for 15 minutes. Dough will double in size. Punch down and shape for your your pizza or bread sticks. Top with fav sauce, cheese, and toppings. Bake at 400 degrees on greased pizza pan. We have this every Friday night so this is from memory. Let me know how it works out for you.

(For sauce: We take on 4 oz can of tomato sauce or 1/2 can of tomato paste with added water, and add tsp sugar, tsp oil, tsp lemon juice, tsp pizza seasoning (mix of dried basil, oregano, and parsley), 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 1/2 tsp salt...)

Grilled Pizza

This is quite possibly the easiest pizza dough ever. You don't need a mixer. You don't need a pizza stone. And if you grill it, you don't even need an oven. And the end result is some of the best homemade pizza I've had.

This recipe yields one smallish (10 inch?) thin crust pizza.

1 1/2 cups flour (can replace up to half of this with whole wheat flour)
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water (you may need to add another tablespoon or 2)
1 tablespoon olive oil

Also: toppings, sauce, cheese (I recommend using a nice mix of different cheeses. We did mozzarella and parmesan and I think our pizzas could have benefited from a little romano and asiago thrown in the mix as well), etc.

Stir dry ingredients, including yeast, in a large bowl. Add water and olive oil, stirring mixture into as close to a ball as you can (in my case: not like a ball at all), dump all clumps and floury bits onto a lightly floured surface and knead everything into a homogeneous ball (if you are finding this difficult just leave the dough on your floured surface, covered by the upside bowl, for 2-5 minutes. It should be easier to knead after).

Knead just for a minute or two. Lightly oil the bowl with a spritz of cooking spray, dump the dough in, turning to coat, cover with plastic wrap and leave undisturbed for an hour or two until it has doubled in size.

Dump onto a floured surface and gently press the air out of the dough with the palm of your hands. Fold the piece into an approximate ball shape and let it sit under the plastic wrap for 20 more minutes.

Preheat the grill on HIGH. Roll out dough, brush oil on one side and sprinkle with cornmeal. Turn the grill down to MEDIUM and flip the dough on to the grill (oiled side down) directly over the heat. While it is cooking coat the other side of the dough with oil and cornmeal and then flip it over (give it a minute or 2 to cook...it should have grill lines and maybe a little charring by the time you flip it). Turn the grill off (or, if you have other burners off to the side, turn off the one directly under the pizza and leave the other ones on to keep the internal temperature up). Quickly add sauce, toppings, cheese, etc. and close the grill lid. Cook 5-8 minutes until cheese is melted and bubbly around the edges, toppings are cooked, etc.

Enjoy!

Recipe and cooking method pulled from posts and comments over at Smitten Kitchen

BLT pizza, minus the L

For the sake of keeping the blog alive I will tell you we had homemade pizza the other night and it was so good. If you haven't discovered yet, the best toppings for a pizza are bacon and tomatoes and it is extra convenient because it is an easy way to cook your tomatoes so you can actually eat them (have you heard about the whole salmonella thing?).

Anyway, I have tried to make my own crust before and it never works, so I bought a jiffy pizza crust mix for like $.33 or something. Then we topped with ragu pizza sauce, bacon (precooked), tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, mozzarella and Parmesan. It was the best pizza I have ever made.

Any good recipes for pizza crust out there?