Pizza Fun

Who doesn't love a nice pizza?! Be it the American version or the Italian version, these babies are just crowd pleasers. You can basically put whatever you want on dough, add some cheese and pop it in the oven. Magic before your eyes :)

After my few trips to Italy, I have tried many varieties and I must say that the most impressive and yummy was with potatoes. But that was just too heavy for supper time in Spain. People here eat supper around 10pm usually and I hate it. You go to bed with a full stomach and don't get a good nice sleep. Not to mention adding on the pounds! It is true that most people eat very little at night, no rice, no pasta, no beans... but still, that's not much of a supper to us... So David and I have "created" our new supper time. Starting at 8h 8h30. Great balance with a less bigger portion than Canada, lots of time afterwards to take out Santo for his walk to the park (a bit of exercise to work that food down), a bit of TV time and bed time. Perfect combination between Canadian and Spanish schedules :) We know quite the amount of people that eat at that time as well because of the kids or for the same reasons as us. This is one of the things that Spaniards should learn from the other continent or as they say: del otro lado del charco (on the other side of the puddle)!

Ok, back to my pizza! I wanted some veggies on there but knew that if I put only those, David would look at me with devil eyes stating it is not pizza without meat... So I worked with what I had: bacon, eggplant (for me, David delicately removed it from his slices and threw it onto mine), leek and mushrooms. :) Miam!

David and I are big fans of the stuffed crust at Pizza Hut. The perfect way of making it is using Ficello. The shape and size is perfect and I have heard rumors that is exactly what they use. So since looking for ficellos here is like looking for water in the desert, I use some of my grated cheese to fill it. Not the same effect as you have WAY less cheese, but at least you get a bit of it :)

Stuffed Crust Veggie and Bacon Pizza

Ingredients:

1 cup of flour with yeast
1/2 cup of luke water
3 tbsps oil
1 tsp salt
1/2 eggplant
4 slices bacon
1/2 leek
50gr mushrooms
200gr grated cheese
1/2 cup grinded tomato
1 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp oregano
salt and pepper
oil


In a bowl, mix the flour and salt. Form a hole and add the water and oil. Mix well and knead the dough for about 5 minutes.

Cover the bowl with a rag and let the dough rest for 1 hour.

Preheat your oven at 240C.

Slice the bacon, leek, mushroom and eggplant. I precook my eggplant and bacon in order to have it perfectly cooked on the pizza. Since my oven was already hot, it was easy to do so when the dough was resting.

In a small pan, cook the tomato sauce. Add the garlic powder, oregano, salt and pepper. Cooking it reduces it to a paste and preventing the dough from getting soggy.

Roll the dough out forming a thin crust big enough to cover your pizza pan.

Place some cheese around the edge of the pizza. This is where the ficellos would be super handy!

Fold the dough back onto the cheese and close well. It kinda looks messy but the filling will hide the mess ;)

I popped the dough into the oven for about 2 minutes just to get the dough starting. This helps keeping it firm and not soggy from the ingredients.

Add the tomato sauce.

Add the ingredients.

Add the cheese and brush the crust with some oil.

Cook for about 20 minutes until you got a golden crust and look.

And here is the masterpiece seconds before disappearing :) Pizza is such a TV/couch supper ;)