It’s pretty much a given that if it has garlic on it, I’ll eat it.

This vegetarian pizza is no exception.

It gets its rich, mellow flavor from slow-roasted garlic and fresh, baby spinach. Fontina and Parmesan add depth and a little salt. The tangy white sauce balances out the flavors.

Vote Hungry Mouse!

OK, so here’s the deal.

This is my entry in the Breakstone’s Battle of the Kitchen Bloggers, hosted by Sandra Lee. . (Yep, the same folks who hosted last year’s Triple Churned Challenge.) Check out my appetizer, Sweet & Spicy Coconut Shrimp.

For the Showdown, Kraft invited me and 2 other bloggers to duke it out. Picture American Idol meets Iron Chef and you’ve kind of got the idea. (Our secret ingredient? Breakstone’s sour cream.)

I picked pizza because it’s something that’s easy to throw together on a weeknight if you have dough on hand. (And if you don’t, grab a ball at your local market or pizza joint on the way home.) You can get pretty creative with ingredients–and you’re almost always guaranteed to have something you can use on hand.

Don’t believe me? Go take a peek in your fridge and come up with a pizza. (Leave a note in the comments below!) I’m bracing for that artichoke heart, bacon, and broccoli pizza. (Ya know, I’ll bet it would be delicious.)

The participating bloggers have a chance to win a cash prize (1^st place is $350, 2^nd place is $250, and 3^rd place is $150).

Enter to win!

As part of the Holiday Showdown, you can enter win a handful of different prizes. If you enter, you’ll have a chance to win a $50 gift card (one winner each week).

You’ll also automatically be entered to win a grand prize of $2,500!

Sound enticing? I thought it might. Click here to enter to win. You can go back and vote and enter every day!

Alrighty, to the ovens!

Roasted Garlic & Spinach Pizza

1 large whole head of garlic
good quality olive oil
½ cup whole milk ricotta
1/4 cup Breakstone’s sour cream
1 ball pizza dough
Fontina cheese, shredded
Parmesan cheese, grated
1 cup fresh baby spinach

Makes 1 large pizza, serves 4-6

Roast the garlic

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Whack the garlic head in half horizontally.

Put it in a small baking dish (paper and all) and drizzle with olive oil.

Cover tightly with aluminum foil. Roast for 25-40 minutes, until soft, golden brown, and fragrant. Remove from the oven & uncover the pan.

Yank the roasted garlic cloves out of the skin with a fork and put them in a small bowl.

Mash them into a paste in a small dish with a fork.

Strain the oil (that’s pure roasted garlic flavor), pop it in the fridge, and reserve it for another use. (Add to salad dressings, brush bread before toasting, rub a roasting chicken with it, you name it…)

Make the white sauce

Put the ricotta, Breakstone’s sour cream, and roasted garlic in a small dish. Whisk together until uniform. Set aside.

Assemble the pizza

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Roll the pizza dough out on a lightly floured board.

Transfer to an unlined, nonstick pizza pan. Stretch it out with your hands so it covers the whole pan.

Spread the dough evenly with the sour cream & roasted garlic mixture.

Sprinkle with a thin layer of Fontina.

Add a thin layer of baby spinach.

Sprinkle with another thin layer of Fontina. Dust with Parmesan cheese. I tossed on a little freshly cracked pepper, just for good measure. You get the idea. (Pizza is a great canvas. Don’t be afraid to improvise.)

Bake the pizza

Bake the pizza in your preheated, 500-degree oven for 10-12 minutes, until crisp and lightly browned.

Remove from the oven and slide it onto a wooden board. Slice and serve immediately.

Serving tip

Add more protein to this pizza with thinly sliced, leftover roast chicken or par-cooked shrimp. (And a handful of crispy, crumbled bacon couldn’t hurt, either…)

Please vote for The Hungry Mouse!

Click here to enter to vote and enter to win.

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Pizza is the great unifier.

I mean, you can take a handful of motley, leftover ingredients (say, a little spinach, some cooked bacon, the last bits of a few different kinds of cheese), put them on a pizza, and…presto! A delicious meal with very little effort.

It’s my ultimate I-have-no-idea-what-to-make-for-dinner-tonight meal.

This is also my second entry in the Breakstone’s Triple Churned Challenge. If you like what you see, please consider voting for my menu! (When you vote, you’ll be entered to win $300!)

Homemade pizza dough versus store bought

For this pizza, you can go all out and make the dough from scratch—or, if you’re short on time, swing by your local pizza joint and ask them to sell you a ball or two of dough. Most places are happy to oblige.

Or grab a ball of fresh dough at the grocery store on your way home from work. (Pizza dough also freezes really well. You just need to plan ahead a little to thaw it out.)

I’ll often make a batch of dough at the beginning of the week, so I have it on hand when inspiration strikes.

My favorite pizza dough recipes

If you want to make your own dough, here’s a list of my favorite pizza recipes to date. I used the dough from the Thin-Crust Pizza for this pizza.

• Thin-Crust Pizza—great flavor, chewy texture, needs to be made the night before
• Nice & Easy Pizza Dough—quick dough, aged less, good in a pinch
• Thick Crust Sausage & Cheese Pizza—thicker, breadier crust

Less is more (the secret to good thin-crust pizza)

Go light on toppings. Use as many as you like, but don’t pile them on by the metric tonne. When you’re tempted to add more: Stop. You can do it. You’ll thank yourself later.

Your restraint will help keep the crust from getting soggy.

Pizza is a good way to use up leftover ingredients

Or stretch a small amount of pricier ingredients to feed a crowd.

For this pizza, you build layers of flavor by quickly sautéing the shrimp in a little bit of bacon fat and freshly cracked black pepper. The bacon adds a subtle smokiness that pairs really well with the asparagus.

Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to peel and devein fresh shrimp. (Scroll down.)

I used 16/25 count shrimp for this recipe, but by all means, use any size you like—or whatever’s on sale.

Bigger shrimp just make a more dramatic presentation.

The white sauce is a mixture of ricotta and Breakstone’s sour cream, which adds a really nice tang to the pizza.

I used whole milk ricotta, but it would be good with skim, too.

For this recipe, I used my favorite Black Forest bacon from Whole Foods.

The Black Forest bacon is totally worth hunting down, and not really more expensive than a pound of regular bacon that’s not on sale. (Alright, I’ll readily admit that I’m probably addicted to the stuff.) But by all means, use your favorite bacon.

The fresh chili pepper adds a little heat (if you’re not crazy about hot stuff, just leave it off).  I also used asparagus, one of my favorite springtime veggies—not to mention an excellent companion to bacon.

This particular combination of ingredients makes a great springtime pizza.

My second recipe for the Breakstone’s Triple Churned Challenge

So, we’ve been challenged!

That’s right! The good folks from Breakstone’s threw down the gauntlet, and we picked it right up (mice love found things, after all). Here’s the scoop on The Breakstone’s Triple Churned Challenge.

Vote today and be entered to win $300

Breakstone’s challenged me and three other gals to create an appetizer, entree, and dessert using their Triple Churned Sour Cream.

This contest is sponsored by Breakstone’s and the winner will be chosen by reader vote. Readers can vote for their favorite recipes here once a day. The grand prize is $3,000 (how cool is that?)!

And every time you vote, you’ll be entered to win a $300. The more you vote, the greater your chances to win. (Thanks, Breakstone’s!)

If you missed it, here’s my entry in the appetizer category: Panko & Chili Crusted Oven Fried Chicken Fingers.

The basic technique for this pizza

The short version of this recipe goes like this: Fry the bacon and par-cook the shrimp. Roll the dough out. Slap a little sauce on it. Arrange your ingredients. Bake in a super hot oven for about 12 minutes. Inhale.

Read on for more detailed instructions.

Spicy White Pizza with Bacon, Shrimp & Asparagus

1 ball pizza dough (see note above)
coarse cornmeal for the pizza pan
1/2 cup whole-milk ricotta
1/4 cup Breakstone’s sour cream
1/4 lb. bacon, diced
1/2 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
6-7 spears asparagus, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 chili pepper, seeded, deveined, and sliced into thin strips
shredded mozzarella cheese
Parmesan cheese
freshly cracked black pepper

Makes 1 large pizza

Bring your dough to room temperature

For this recipe, I’m assuming that you either bought a ball of pizza dough somewhere—or made your own. If you’ve refrigerated your dough, take it out and let it come up to room temperature before handling.

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees.

Prep your veggies

Nip the bottom quarter-inch or so of the asparagus off and discard. Chop the spears into pieces about a half an inch long. Whack the top off your chili pepper.

Cut it in half lengthwise. Remove the seeds and the ribs. Discard them.

Slice the pepper lengthwise into thin strips.

Make the white sauce for the pizza

Put the ricotta and the Breakstone’s sour cream in a small bowl.

Grind on a little fresh black pepper. (I don’t add any salt here because the shredded cheese is usually plenty salty.)

Mix until uniform. Set aside.

Fry the bacon

Dice the bacon up. Put it in a nonstick pan over medium-high heat.

Stir occasionally, cooking until the bacon is crisp.

Remove the bacon from the pan with a slotted spoon. Set it aside in a bowl (line it with a paper towel, if you like, to catch any leftover grease).

Pre-cook the shrimp

Discard most of the bacon fat from the frying pan. (Save it in the fridge and use it to fry potatoes!)

Toss the shrimp into the pan. Season with a little freshly cracked black pepper. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently.

This is important. You just want to get a little color on the shrimp at this point—but not cook them all the way through.

When they’ve just turned pink on both sides, yank them out of the pan and put them in a bowl. (See how they’re a little blueish and translucent in places? That’s what you want. It means they’re still raw inside.) They’ll finish cooking in the oven.

Roll out the dough

Sprinkle a little coarse cornmeal on a large pizza pan (round or rectangular…up to you!

Set your ball of dough on a lightly floured board.

Stretch it out (or roll it…sacrilege, I know…but also pretty darn effective) so it covers your whole pizza pan.

Assemble the pizza!

Grab your cheese out of the fridge. It’s time to assemble the pizza.

So, by now, your counter should look about like this. Pan covered in dough. Ricotta/sour cream white sauce. Fried bacon and shrimp. Sliced asparagus and chili pepper. Grated Parmesan and shredded mozzarella.

Spread a thin layer of white sauce on the dough. (Depending on how large your pizza is and how thin you rolled the crust, you may or may not use all of the sauce.)

Sprinkle with half the chopped bacon.

Sprinkle with a little shredded mozzarella.

Arrange the shrimp so they’re spread out.

Add some slivers of pepper.

And the asparagus spears.

Sprinkle with the rest of the bacon, a little more mozzarella, and some grated Parmesan. Topping a pizza like this (cheese, toppings, more cheese), helps the toppings stick to the pizza better when you bite into a slice.

Bake the pizza!

Pop the pizza into your preheated 500-degree oven.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the cheese is brown and bubbly and the crust is crisp.

Yank the pan out of the oven. Slice immediately and serve.

Enjoy!

If you liked this pizza, please vote for me!

You can vote daily, and be entered to win $300.

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Homemade pizza is one of my favorite ways to feed a crowd—especially a crew of hungry movers. (We’re in the process of relocating The Mouse House this week! More on that to come soon!) This particular pizza combines two of my favorite things: bacon and cheese. Think of it as a mouthwatering take on a BLT in pizza form.

Ribbons of fresh basil and paper-thin slices of ripe tomato provide a ton of fresh flavor—without making the pizza too wet. A few handfuls of shredded mozzarella and grated Parmesan give the pie all the cheesy goodness you expect in a pizza.

And then, of course, there’s the bacon. I used Black Forest bacon from Whole Foods, but you can certainly use your favorite kind. (If you’ve been following The Hungry Mouse, you know I can’t get enough of this stuff. It’s deeply smokey and slightly sweet.)

Black Forest Bacon, crisp as can be

How to make the pizza dough

I used the basic dough recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread, by Peter Reinhart.

I first made this dough for the Daring Baker’s October Challenge last year, and it remains one of my favorite pizza doughs. The dough needs to rest overnight, so start it the day before you want to make your pizzas.

If you don’t want to do the dough overnight, you can always use my Nice & Easy Pizza Dough recipe. For a thicker crust, try the dough from my Thick Crust Sausage & Cheese Pizza.

Or, use your favorite dough. As much as I love a good crust, this one is more about the toppings for me.

The dough recipe below makes three fairly large pizzas (maybe 16 inches or so in diameter). I used 2 of the balls for this Bacon, Basil & Tomato Pizza. I used the last to make a slightly smaller, thicker white cheese pizza.

Bacon, Basil & Tomato Pizza

Pizza Dough (Click here for step-by-step instructions for how to make the dough)
4 1/2 cups unbleached high-gluten (%14) bread flour or all purpose flour
1 3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
1 3/4 cups water, ice cold
1 Tb sugar
Spray oil
Coarse cornmeal

Yields: Enough dough for 6 small pizzas or 3 large ones

Pizza Toppings
Shredded mozzarella
Grated Parmesan
1-2 large, ripe tomatoes
1/2 – 3/4 lb. Black Forest bacon (or any bacon you like), cooked and crumbled
Fresh basil, cut into ribbons
kosher salt
garlic powder

The night before, make the pizza dough according to these instructions. Divide the dough into 3 balls and refrigerate overnight.

When you’re ready to make your pizzas, take the dough out of the fridge and bring it up to room temperature. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Sprinkle your pizza pans with coarse cornmeal.

Roll out the pizza dough

Flatten each ball of dough out with a rolling pin or by stretching it across the backs of your hands. Put the dough on top of your prepared pans.

Add the toppings to the pizza dough

Sprinkle lightly with shredded mozzarella. This is to give your tomatoes a base to stick to.

Slice your tomato as thin as you can.

Spread the tomato slices out on top of the cheese. Cover the pizza without overlapping the tomatoes.

Sprinkle with crumbled bacon.

And another thin layer of mozzarella. (It may seem fussy, but I’ve found that layering the ingredients like this helps the all the toppings stick together better, and avoids pizza snafus…like when you take one bite and ALL the cheese comes off in one piece.)

Toss on the cut basil. Spread it out fairly evenly.

Sprinkle with a layer of Parmesan cheese. Then sprinkle on a light layer of garlic powder. Toss on a little salt if you like (there will already be a fair amount from the Parmesan).

Bake the pizza in a really hot oven

Slide your pizzas (pan and all) into your preheated 500-degree oven. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until your crust and toppings are nicely browned.

Cool your pizza for a few minutes on the pan, then slide it off onto a board and cut into wedges with a sharp butcher knife or pizza cutter.

Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

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I have a few different pizza recipes. This is my old standby, whip-it-together-then-forget-about-it pizza dough.

It produces a versatile, bread-y crust that can hold an almost-heroic amount of toppings. The crust is pre-baked, then topped and blasted quickly in a hot oven, so it won’t get soggy.

The crust itself has a relatively mild flavor, since it only gets one long-ish rise, then a quicker one. (As a general rule, the longer dough rises and rests, the more flavor it develops.)

I made two of these for our recent Fight Night Feast—one with tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella, and the other with a mix of Italian cheeses.

For a heartier pizza, check out my Thick Crust Sausage & Cheese Pizza. For a fabulous, chewy, old-school pizza crust (topped with ground lamb or spinach and parmesan) check out the Daring Bakers’ October Challenge: Thin-Crust Pizza. This last one is by far my favorite dough, but it takes two days to make.

Today’s recipe can be thrown together with great results in a few hours. I’m cutting a few corners on traditional baking best practices (more on that to come in the next few weeks) in the interest of time and convenience.

This dough also has a fairly high ratio of flour to water, so it’s stiff and easy to work with.

It provides a great blank canvas for almost any pizza toppings you can imagine, including:

+A mix of mozzarella and blue cheeses with slices of buffalo chicken tenders
+Sauteed ground sausage, pineapple chunks, and fontina
+Fig preserves, prosciutto, and Gorgonzola (a la Todd English‘s Figs Restaurant here in Boston…check out April’s gorgeous version here.)

A note on equipment for making pizza dough

This is super easy and fast to make with a stand mixer. You can also mix the dough by hand in a large bowl with a sturdy wooden spoon, then your hands.

Nice & Easy Pizza Dough (Plus Simple Red & White Pizzas)

For the dough
2 cups warm water
1 Tbls. yeast
pinch of sugar
5 cups flour
1 tsp. kosher salt

Simple Red Pizza
Ground, peeled tomatoes
Fresh basil leaves
Fresh mozzarella
Kosher salt
Freshly cracked black pepper

Simple White Pizza
6-cheese Italian blend
Fresh mozzarella
Kosher salt
Freshly cracked black pepper
Garlic powder

Makes 2 large pizzas.

Make the pizza dough

Put the yeast, lukewarm water, and pinch of sugar in the bowl of your mixer. The water should be warm, but not hot (or else it will kill your yeast).

The sugar is there to give your yeast a little something to nibble on right away to help give your dough a little extra poof.

Add the flour and the salt.

Fit your mixer with its dough hook. Mix on medium-high until the dough comes together in a sticky ball.

You want it to look about like this:

Remove the dough hook and bowl from the mixer. With your hands, knead the dough a few times right in the bowl until it forms a smooth-ish, springy ball.

Set the pizza dough aside for its first rise

Cover the bowl with a few paper damp towels. Set the bowl in a warm place to rise for an hour, or until it’s about doubled in size.

When it’s doubled, it should look about like this:

Roll out the pizza dough

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.

When the dough has doubled in size, smoosh it down with your hands to squeeze some of the air out of it.

Mix the dough on medium speed with the dough hook.

Knead it like this for a few minutes.

Toss a little flour on a board or your counter.

Scrape the dough off the dough hook and out of the bowl. With your hands, round it up into a ball, like this:

Cut the dough in half.

Round each half up into a neat little ball. The dough should be fairly smooth and not too, too sticky. Toss a little flour onto it if you find that it’s sticking to your hands or the board.

Grab one dough ball and transfer it to one of your prepared baking sheets.

With your hands, smoosh the dough down until it’s fairly flat.

With a small rolling pin (a wine bottle works in a pinch!), roll the dough out so that it fills your baking sheet. You want the dough to be relatively flat and even, but don’t make yourself nuts.

Set this pan aside. Repeat with the other ball of dough.

Let the rolled pizza dough rise

Set the pans aside, uncovered, for about another hour, or until the dough has about doubled in size.

While the dough is rising, prep your toppings, so they’re ready to go when your crusts are pre-baked.

About 20 minutes or so before your hour is up, preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Pre-bake the pizza crusts

When the dough has doubled in size, pop your pans into your preheated oven and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or so, or until they’re just starting to turn brown at the edges.

Leave your oven on.

Top your pizzas & finish baking

Spread the pre-baked pizza crusts with your toppings of choice.

For this pizza, I used a few spoons of Pastene brand ground, peeled tomatoes, some thinly sliced fresh mozzarella, and a handful of torn up basil leaves.

For the second pizza, I used a 6-cheese Italian cheese blend, plus some pieces of fresh mozzarella and a little garlic powder.

Pop both topped pizzas back into the oven.

Bake at 400 degrees until the cheese has melted and the toppings are done the way you like them. Grab them out of the oven, slide the pizzas off onto a board, and slice into wedges.

Serve and enjoy!

Here are some of the best discounts and sales I’ve found this week.

***
Copyright 2008-2009 The Hungry Mouse™/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.

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Their blogroll includes some of the savviest and intrepid bakers I’ve ever encountered. Definitely check out their amazing—and lengthy—list of food blogs.

This month’s theme is pizza. And the recipe for dough couldn’t be better. It’s chewy and flavorful. The bottom crust gets gloriously crisp from baking on the back of a sheet pan in a super-hot oven. The recipe makes enough for 6 medium to smallish pizzas. I made two last night.

The first is a white pizza that’s topped with ground lamb (and the flavorful fat from frying it), a blend of six Italian cheeses (mozzerella, provolone, Parmesan, asiago, fontina, and romano), Aleppo chili flakes, and fresh thyme leaves. If you don’t have Aleppo chili on hand, you can use any hot, flaked chili pepper.

The second is a more traditional red pizza, with ground tomatoes, baby spinach leaves, grated Parmesan, and freshly cracked black pepper.

I’m excited to play with the rest of the dough, which can sit in the fridge for a few days happily developing flavor.

Six-Cheese Thin-Crust Pizza with Lamb and Fresh Thyme

Spinach Parmesan Thin-Crust Pizza

This is a long post, but here it is: step-by-step photos on how to make your own thin-crust pizza. The technique for the dough is first, followed by the specific instructions for these two pizzas.

Daring Bakers’ October Challenge, Thin-Crust Pizza: A note on the recipe
The recipe for the dough was taken from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread, by Peter Reinhart. It’s a two-day dough, so start it the day before you want to make your pizza. The dough needs to rest in the fridge overnight.

Basic Pizza Dough

Makes 6 pizza crusts (about 9-12 inches in diameter)

4 1/2 cups unbleached high-gluten (%14) bread flour or all purpose flour
1 3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
1 3/4 cups water, ice cold
1 Tb sugar
Semolina/durum flour or cornmeal for dusting
Spray oil

Six-Cheese Thin-Crust Pizza with Lamb and Fresh Thyme

1 ball of pizza dough
ground lamb + some of the oil that results from frying it
powdered garlic
dried rosemary
shredded Italian cheese mix with mozzerella, provolone, Parmesan, asiago, fontina, and romano
Aleppo chili flakes
salt

Spinach Parmesan Thin-Crust Pizza

1 ball pizza dough
ground, peeled tomatoes
baby spinach leaves
grated Parmesan cheese
freshly cracked black pepper
olive oil

Daring Bakers’ October Challenge, Thin-Crust Pizza. Day one: Make the dough, then let it rest overnight

Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Spray the paper lightly with oil. Set it aside.

Fit your mixer with the standard paddle attachment. Put the yeast and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer.

Toss in the flour.

Stir the dry ingredients to mix well. I like to do this with a wooden spoon to be sure I get everything on the very bottom of the bowl.

With the mixer running on low, drizzle in the olive oil.

When all the oil has been added, the dough will have formed little balls, like this:

Sprinkle in the sugar, with the mixer running on low.

Drizzle in the cold water, with the mixer running on low. As you add the water, the dough will form little balls, then come together in a sticky ball.

When you’ve added all the water, your dough should look about like this:

At this point, switch from the paddle attachment to the dough hook.

Knead for 5-7 minutes on medium speed, til the dough is smooth and even. When you remove the hook, it should look about like this:

Lightly flour a board or your counter and turn the dough out of the bowl. At this point, it should be creamy and tacky, but not super sticky.

With your hands, form the dough into a fairly uniform ball. Using a dough scraper, cut the dough ball into 6 pieces that are about the same size. (Or fewer pieces if you want larger pizzas.)

Sprinkle the dough with a little flour. Roll each piece into a ball.

Put the dough balls onto your prepared sheet pan.

Mist them liberally with spray oil. Wrap the pan up with plastic wrap. Stick the pan in the fridge overnight (or for up to three days) to let the dough rest.

Daring Bakers’ October Challenge, Thin-Crust Pizza. Day two: Make your pizza

When you’re ready to make your pizza, dust your counter or a board with flour. Remove the desired number of dough balls from the fridge 2 hours before you’re ready to cook. Put them on the counter and dust them with flour.

Gently press each ball into a flat round that’s about half an inch thick and 5 inches in diameter.

Sprinkle with flour and mist with spray oil. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let them rest for 2 hours.

Daring Bakers’ October Challenge, Thin-Crust Pizza: A quick note about baking and preheating your oven

About 20 minutes before you’re ready to bake your pizza, preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Grab a sheet pan and flip it upside down. Sprinkle it generously with cornmeal. Set it aside.

(You can also use a baking stone if you have one. If you do, preheat your oven 45 minutes beforehand, and stick the stone in the oven in the lower third.)

Daring Bakers’ October Challenge, Thin-Crust Pizza: Toss, top, and bake your pizza

After 2 hours, your dough balls will have poofed up a bit and should look about like this:

Loosen one dough round from the board with a dough scraper.

Flour your hands. Lay the dough across the back of your hands.

Gently spread your hands apart, stretching the dough.

Do this over and over, rotating the dough as you go. If you’re feeling brave, give it a full toss or two.

If this is giving you trouble, you can also roll the dough out with a rolling pin. When it’s reached the thinness you want, lay the dough on top of the cornmeal on the sheet pan.

Daring Bakers’ October Challenge, Thin-Crust Pizza: A note on toppings

I’ve included the topping instructions for both the pizzas I made below.

Use whatever toppings you like at this point. Sprinkle sparingly, though. The thinner your pizza is, the smaller the amount of toppings you want, so your crust doesn’t get soggy or overwhelmed.

Six-Cheese Thin-Crust Pizza with Lamb and Fresh Thyme

I made the lamb pizza first, so at this point, I stopped to fry up the lamb. You could also do this in advance, of course.

Break up some ground lamb in a non-stick pan over medium-high heat. Add garlic powder and dried rosemary to taste.

Fry ’til it’s nicely browned. Reserve some of the lamb fat. You’ll be using it to flavor your pizza. Your lamb should look about like this:

Add a tablespoon or so of the fat from the lamb to your pizza dough.

With your hands, spread it around so it covers the whole piece of dough. Sprinkle on the ground lamb.

Then sprinkle on some cheese in a thin, even layer.

Add fresh thyme leaves and Aleppo chili flakes to taste.

Your pizza should look about like this when it’s ready to go in the oven:

Pop the pizza into your preheated oven, and bake at 500 degrees for 5-8 minutes. Take it out when the crust is nicely brown and the toppings are done to your liking.

When it’s done, slide it onto a cutting board. Slice, serve, and enjoy!

Daring Bakers’ October Challenge, Thin-Crust Pizza: Spinach Parmesan Thin-Crust Pizza

For this pizza, follow the instructions above for prepping your dough.

When you’re ready to top your pizza, add a few large soup spoons of ground, peeled tomatoes to the center of your dough.

With your hands, spread the tomatoes out so they cover the entire piece of dough, like this:

Add some whole baby spinach leaves on top of the tomatoes. If you’re patient and have the inclination, you can make a pretty pattern with them.

When you’ve added the spinach, sprinkle generously with grated Parmesan cheese. Your pizza should look about like this:

Crack some black pepper over the pizza. Drizzle with a little olive oil.

Bake in a 500 degree oven for 5-8 minutes. Take it out when the crust is nicely brown and the toppings are done to your liking.

Slide off the pan onto a board. Slice, serve, and enjoy!

***
Copyright 2008 The Hungry Mouse™/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.

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