Tag: pizza

Categories
Breakfast

You don’t have to work hard for ‘egg’cellent pizza

Breakfast pizza is easy to make and gives you all the flavors of sausage gravy, eggs and fried potatoes in one, handheld meal.
Breakfast pizza is easy to make and gives you all the flavors of sausage gravy, eggs and fried potatoes in one, handheld meal.

In January, Joey happened upon a post for a local restaurant that was going to serve breakfast pizzas for their New Year’s Day brunch.

We weren’t able to make it, but he kept mentioning it over the next few weeks—noting that we could surely figure out how to make a fantastic breakfast pizza ourselves.

After all, we are pretty good at breakfast at our house. Of course, we mostly just eat it for dinner, opting for boring items like granola bars and cereal in the morning, but I think it still counts.

One of our favorites is making biscuits with sausage gravy, and that became the base for our breakfast pizza idea. After some brainstorming, we came to a consensus and created this week’s recipe.

As you will see, it’s simple to customize. You can easily make it spicy or substitute some frozen hashbrown potatoes in place of a fresh spud. You can even use a gravy mix, if you like. I won’t tell anyone.

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Breakfast Pizza

Breakfast pizza is easy to make and gives you all the flavors of sausage gravy, eggs and fried potatoes in one, handheld meal.
Course Breakfast
Keyword cheese, eggs, pizza, potatoes, premade crust, sausage gravy

Ingredients

  • 2 packages pre-made pizza dough I used 7.8-ounce crusts
  • 1 pound sausage I used sage
  • flour amount will vary, see directions
  • milk I used skim (amount will vary, see directions)
  • 1 medium potato thinly sliced
  • an egg for each person
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • about 2 cups shredded cheese

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to whatever temperature is listed on your pre-made crusts. Roll them out onto pizza or sheet pans (place them on parchment paper for easier cleanup).
  • Heat a large skillet over medium heat, saute the sausage, crumbling it as it browns.
  • Once the sausage is cooked through, do not drain the fat from the pan. Sprinkle flour into the pan, a little at a time, while stirring. Add just enough flour to soak up all of the fat in the pan. You’ll know you have enough when the sausage is no longer shiny.
  • Cook for a couple minutes, and then add about one cup of milk. Stir, scraping the bottom of the skillet as you do to get any cooked on bits.
  • Add more milk, a little at a time, stirring constantly, until you reach your desired gravy consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste. (I also normally add some more sage and some cayenne pepper to mine.) Remove it from heat.
  • Spread the gravy out on the crusts to within about an inch of the edge. Sprinkle cheese evenly over the gravy, and then top with potato slices.
  • Carefully crack one egg for each person you’re feeding toward the center of the pizzas and sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Bake the pizzas for the amount of time on the crust packaging.
  • Cut into slices and serve.

We really enjoyed this for supper. It kind of combines all the great flavors of breakfast into one easy-to-eat meal. Plus, it reheated really well, too.

Variations we thought about were you could wait until halfway through the pizzas baking to crack the eggs on top to get a runny yolk, and we’re going to go out of our way to use spicy sausage next time, too.

It’s always nicer when somebody else cooks for you, and if we get a chance at some restaurant-made breakfast pizza sometime, I’m sure we’ll take it. But now that we know how to make this ourselves, staying home for dinner is pretty great option, too.

This piece first appeared in print on Feb. 10, 2022.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

Categories
Main Dish

Homemade pizza helps you go with the ‘dough’

This pizza dough comes together with only two ingredients and is fairly low fat, not that it makes much difference when you want to have pizza for dinner.
This pizza dough comes together with only two ingredients and is fairly low fat, not that it makes much difference when you want to have pizza for dinner.

When we were kids, one of our favorite suppers was when my mom would make a Chef Boyardee pizza kit.

It came with a mix for making the dough, along with pizza sauce and some grated parmesan. Mom would add meat and some veggies and cheese, and we’d have pizza night.

I think Mom might be a little appalled that I claim this to be on my favorites list, especially since she made so many from-scratch, amazing meals for us over the years, but a kid wants what a kid wants.

Recently, we decided to have a pizza night of our own at home, after a friend of ours recommended a crust recipe she’s been using regularly. Not only is it easy and only two ingredients, but it is also lower fat and doesn’t take any rising time, unlike a lot of other from-scratch doughs.

The recipe she shared with me came from the blog “Crazy for Crust” by Dorothy Kern. You can find the original post at https://www.crazyforcrust.com/weight-watchers-pizza-dough/. I didn’t really spice this one up, since it’s only two ingredients. Also, if you don’t have self-rising flour, visit Dorothy’s website for how to substitute it out.

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Two-ingredient Pizza Dough

This pizza dough comes together with only two ingredients and is fairly low fat, not that it makes much difference when you want to have pizza for dinner.
Course Main Course
Cuisine Italian
Keyword dough, low-fat, pizza, self-rising flour, yogurt

Ingredients

  • 1 cup non-fat, plain Greek yogurt
  • 1 cup self-rising flour

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 400 degrees
  • Add the yogurt and flour to a mixing bowl and mix until combined, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and everything is well incorporated (I kept running into little pockets of yogurt, so be prepared to keep flouring your surface until it finally all combines.)
  • Roll out your dough to your desired thickness. (For ours, which ended up in the hand-tossed thickness category, I rolled it out to about half an inch. If you want thin crust, I’d suggest going for more of a quarter inch, if not thinner.)
  • Place the dough onto some parchment paper on a pizza or baking pan. Top with your favorite toppings.
  • Bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until the crust is browned slightly and cooked through.

For our pizza toppings, we started by brushing the entire crust with extra virgin olive oil. We then tried two variations. For one, we spread on pizza sauce and then sprinkled on some oregano, basil and fresh minced garlic, along with some spicy, precooked sausage and turkey pepperoni, and of course, we sprinkled on plenty of cheese.

Our second pizza used alfredo sauce, along with oregano, basil, fresh minced garlic, spicy sausage, and cheese, along with some fresh spinach leaves.

They were both really tasty, and since I made a double batch of dough, we had tons of leftovers.

Also, I didn’t bother with rolling my dough out into a circle. I just made a square and put it on a rimmed baking sheet. I figured I didn’t really care about the shape as much as the taste.

According to the website this comes from, this is Weight Watchers friendly, so if that’s something you’re working on right now, you might visit the post for more information.

This might be a fun recipe to try with kiddos, too, especially if you separate the dough out for everyone to top their own mini pie.

And despite the fact that our pizza was probably closer to “traditional” than the good, old Chef Boyardee variety, I still have some nostalgic cravings for my childhood pizza nights. Nowadays, I think Mom and Dad would much rather have us take them out for pizza, but while we’re all still stuck at home, maybe I should think about adding a kit to my next shopping list.

This piece first appeared in print on April 9, 2020.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

Categories
Appetizer Main Dish Snack

Pizza sticks will make you say, ‘Yes, cheese!’

Cheesy pizza sticks are great for a quick snack an especially good recipe for beginning cooks to try their hand in the kitchen.
Cheesy pizza sticks are great for a quick snack an especially good recipe for beginning cooks to try their hand in the kitchen.

While my sister was still pregnant with my now almost 1-1/2-year-old niece, I noticed my shopping habits change.

I was constantly picking up this cute outfit or that cool toy even before our beautiful Emi graced us with her presence.

My only problem has been patience, as I always seem to find toys or outfits that she’s not quite ready for yet.

The other day, it was a child’s apron and baker’s hat. It was adorable, and I nearly shoved it into my cart before I thought through the fact that (1) this outfit was clearly made for someone more the size of a five-year-old and (2) my niece, while smart and sassy, is just now completely conquering solid foods and probably isn’t quite ready to help prepare them with me yet.

That being said, I have, on occasion, gotten to cook with kids over the years, and it’s always fun to watch them learn a life skill and enjoy their creations afterwards.

The recipe I found this week on the blog “I Wash, You Dry” is one I’ll be setting aside for Emi and I to try out when she’s a little older. It’s so simple there isn’t much to adjust, but I decided to change up the spices a bit. You can find the original post at https://iwashyoudry.com/cheesy-pepperoni-pizza-sticks/.

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Cheesy Pizza Sticks

Cheesy pizza sticks are great for a quick snack an especially good recipe for beginning cooks to try their hand in the kitchen.
Course Appetizer, Main Course, Snack
Keyword cheese, kid-friendly, pepperoni, pizza

Ingredients

  • 1 tube refrigerated pizza dough
  • 40 slices pepperoni I used turkey pepperoni
  • 10 mozzarella cheese sticks
  • 2 tablespoons butter or margarine melted
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried parsley
  • 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
  • Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with tinfoil and spraying it with cooking spray.
  • Unroll the pizza dough onto the baking sheet (don’t worry about trying to roll it out thinner at this point, just get it flat).
  • Cut the dough into 10 equal rectangles.
  • Place four pepperoni slices and one cheese stick on each rectangle, and then pinch the dough to seal it around the cheese and meat.
  • Lay the pizza sticks, seam side down, about an inch apart on the baking sheet.
  • In a small bowl, combine the melted butter and the oregano, basil, parsley and garlic powder.
  • Brush it onto each pizza stick. (I used a spoon to get the remaining goodies out of the bottom of the bowl and spread them out, too.)
  • Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until the dough is golden brown on top.
  • Let the pizza sticks rest for at least 10 minutes before digging in.

I didn’t have a kiddo to share these with, but the adults who sampled them deemed them a success. They’d be great with some marinara dipping sauce, too.

They did have quite a bit of cheese spill out of them, which was OK in my book, since I love some slightly browned, melted cheese, but that also made me very glad I used aluminum foil to make clean up a breeze.

As summer is approaching and some of you are looking for good recipes to try out with the kids in your lives, I’d recommend this one.

And if you need a good lead on a kid-sized apron, let me know. I’ve got you covered.

This piece first appeared in print on April 11, 2019.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

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