Frustrated with our lack of really good
pizza in our area and simultaneously looking for something a bit different for
dinner, we’ve continued to experiment at home with different ‘pizza’ crusts and
combinations of ingredients…
We’re not into making our own pizza crusts
so we’ve been shopping around for different commercially available alternatives…
The larger crust on the left is a pre-packaged hunk of garlic naan that we
bought at Food Lion. (I don’t remember the brand name) The other 2 crusts are
also from Food Lion. They are ‘Mama Mary’s
Thin and Crispy’ and they come 3 in a pack.
All of the crusts were lightly brushed
with olive oil. The garlic naan was
covered with pesto, pepperoni, crushed red peppers, shredded Italian blend
cheeses and shredded parmesan. The pizza at the top was covered with slices of
Havarti cheese, crushed red peppers, Italian seasonings and slices of leftover
Italian sausage. The pizza on the right was
brushed with a commercial Pizza sauce, crushed red peppers were added and then it
was layered with lots of leftover bacon…
These are the finished products of our
labor… They were all good but the garlic naan pizza with pesto sauce was the
favorite. The pizza with the Italian
sausage at the top was good but I did learn that the cheese belongs on top of
the meat! As you can see, the meat
tended to slough off the pizza as the cheese underneath melted… The ‘bacon’
pizza was good as well. You might have
noticed that we added shredded cheddar cheese to this version before we put it
in the oven.
Eight minutes in the oven wasn’t long enough
to ‘brown’ the top of the pizzas or to crisp up the crusts. Cooking time was about 12 minutes at 325
degrees. Prep time took much longer than
cooking time… These pizzas were as good or better than any we've found in local restaurants... They were individual pizzas but we still had leftovers…and I do
like cold pizza!
We recently bought a different pizza
crust from Fresh Market. It’s an Old World
Flatbread Rustic Crust…Crispy Italian Thin Crust. We’ll see how this crust measures up vs. the
garlic naan and Mama Mary’s in the not too distant future.
Just click on any of the photos to
enlarge them…
Thanks for stopping by for a visit!
Take Care, Big Daddy Dave
You guys are becoming pizza pros.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Larry. You guys will know all of the tricks to store-bought pizza dough soon. I' m anxious to see how the one from Fresh Market works. They have very nice things. Thanks for doing all of the testing. Tough job, but someone has to do it :)
ReplyDeleteHave a good weekend.
Sam
Well, you know where I live and you know the pizza here! It's the best and I could never make one as good as Giordano's, Lou Malnati's, Gino's East, and on and on... Have a great weekend!
ReplyDeleteDavid, have you tried Papa Murphy's pizza? After they put it together to your liking, you bring it home and bake it yourself. You can even put it in the 'frig and bake it later for dinner. They don't taste quite homemade or as good as pizzas you find up north, but they are easier than making it yourself and are frankly for what they are, quite good. Much better and fresher tasting than most southern pizza joints.
ReplyDeleteSam
Sam,
DeleteYes, we have tried Papa Murphy's. We certainly like the concept. Their's was pretty good but considering that our 'homemade' version was much more flavorful and the fact that it's a 35 minute ride to and a 35 minute ride back from Papa Murphy's, I save plenty of time by painstakingly putting ours together at home.
FYI...just the other day we used that pizza crust from Fresh Market and made the best homemade pizza we've had yet...and far better than anything so far in East Tennessee. I'll blog later on this 'creation'.
Take Care, Big Daddy Dave
Look so good David!
ReplyDelete