BBQ Chicken Pizza

For some reason my family won't eat normal pizza with marinara sauce. They love BBQ chicken pizza. So last week I decided I would try making our own. I had never made pizza dough but there are enough recipes out there that sound easy enough (even though cooking with yeast scares me a little). It takes a little time, but really no more hands-on time than other recipes. There's just more waiting time as it sits. So here's what I found.

Pizza Dough

Makes enough for one small, thin crust pizza. Double it if you like your pizza thick and bready.

1 ½ cups flour (can replace up to half of this with whole wheat flour)
1 teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon active dry yeast
½ cup lukewarm water (may need up to 1 or 2 tablespoons more)
1 tablespoon olive oil

Stir yeast into warm water, let sit. Stir dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add water/yeast mixture and olive oil, stirring mixture into as close to a ball as you can. Dump all clumps and floury bits onto a lightly floured surface and knead everything into a homogeneous ball.

Knead it for just a minute or two. Lightly oil the bowl (a spritz of cooking spray perfectly does the trick) where you had mixed it — one-bowl recipe! — dump the dough in, turn it over so all sides are coated, cover it in plastic wrap and leave it undisturbed for an hour or two, until it has doubled in size. (If your kitchen is cold, warm up your oven for a few minutes, turn it off, put the bowl of dough in there to sit and double).

Dump it back on the floured counter 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 that plastic wrap for 20 more minutes.

Sprinkle a pizza stone or baking sheet with cornmeal and preheat your oven to its top temperature. Roll out the pizza, toss on whatever topping and seasonings you like.

Bake it for about 10 minutes until it’s lightly blistered and impossible to resist.

For the BBQ Chicken recipe I sauteed some onions, chopped some cilantro, cooked some chopped up chicken in some bottled BBQ sauce (or you could use the sauce from the salmon recipe), covered the pizza with the bottled BBQ sauce and cheese and voila!