Breakfast Pizza

There is this amazing bakery in San Diego that I LOVE, Bread & Cie.  Along with super delicious bread and pastries, they have a cafe where you can get sandwiches, soup, breakfast, etc.  I always get the breakfast pizza, always.  I crave it.  But it’s so hard because they stop selling it around noon, and it’s really hard to get up and at ’em before noon on the weekends for us.  I honestly have no idea why it took me so long to try and recreate this, but I finally did, and with stellar results!

This is almost an exact copy, except my version has pizza sauce on it, only because I just used a premade frozen cheese pizza from costco.  it would be very easy to make with homemade dough, too.

What you need:

• A cheese pizza, or prepared dough brushed with olive oil and mozzarella cheese
• 2 – 3 eggs
• Scallions, chopped up
• Garlic, minced or sliced
• Bacon, I used about 2 pieces for one pizza
• Grated parmesan cheese
• Salt & pepper

What you need to do:

1. Pre-cook the bacon.  I prefer cooking mine in the oven, but it doesn’t really matter.  To bake the bacon, put bacon on a cookie sheet, or in a pyrex, and bake at 400 for about 12 – 14 minutes (if you are cooking it for real, cook it for 20 mins).
2. Lower oven to recommended temp for your premade pizza (or 450 for homemade).
3. Chop up bacon, scallions, garlic, etc.
4. Crack your eggs directly on the pizza.
5. Top with all other toppings.
   

   Ready to bake

6. Bake the pizza.  Start checking on the pizza after 15 or 20 mins.  Bake until the eggs look fully cooked.

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Pizza Dough

So I made pizza dough, and then a super delicious pizza!  It might seem daunting, but all you need is a lot of flour and a rolling pin to make it totally manageable.  I used my Mixer Bible for the dough recipe (below).  I love any excuse to use my shiny beast of a mixer.  Then, as with most pizzas we make at home, I scoured the fridge for toppings.

What you need for the dough (makes two 12 inch pizzas):

• 1 package active dry yeast
• 1 1/3 cups warm water (100 degrees)
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 3 1/3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tbsp salt
• stand mixer
• rolling pin (preferably french)

What you need to do:

1. Stir the yeast, water and sugar together in a bowl.  Let stand five minutes or so until yeast begins to foam.
2. Stir in the oil
3. Put flour and salt in mixer bowl.  Mix flour and salt together with the flat beater, then add the yeast mixture and mix until a dough forms
4. Switch the flat beater for the dough hook and knead the bread on 2 for three to five minutes, until the sides of the bowl are clean.
5. Cover bowl with a towel or plastic wrap on your counter until the dough has doubled in size.  It took my dough like 3 hours to do this, but the book suggests 45 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 450
7. Get ready to roll out your dough.  USE A LOT OF FLOUR, trust me on this one.  I probably used at least a cup per pizza dough.  Cut the dough in half and roll it out to your desired thickness.
8. Top with your toppings, and bake for 15 minutes or so

What I used for my pizza:

• Marinara Sauce, this kind from Costco is seriously delicious and doesn’t have a bunch of junk in it
• Shredded mozzarella
• Sliced white onions
• Minced garlic
• Asparagus, cut into 1 or 2 inch pieces
• Turkey pesto sausage from the only place I will eat sausages from, pre-cooked (no raw poultry!) then sliced
• sprinkling of italian seasoning and romano cheese

Here is the fine specimen after assembly

Then I baked it for about 15 – 20 mins at 450 degrees, before I stuffed my face.

PS you can totally make, and freeze the dough for later (that’s what I did!).  You just might want to let it give a chance to rise again, if you can.

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Shaved Asparagus Pizza

So this is from smitten kitchen: http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/05/shaved-asparagus-pizza/

I read that post forever ago, and have since made only the raw, shaved asparagus as a side dish.  I made the pizza a few days ago and it was delicious!  I just realized now that I added scallions because I needed to use them, and they are actually part of the original post.  This either means I am thinking like a chef (or reallyreallygood food blogger), orrrr I am a subconscious plagiarizer.  Yes, that is spelled correctly, I know it looks weird.

Anyway, I just use plain cheese pizzas that I buy in a 4 pack at Costco (they are Kirkland brand) for $9 or something like that.  We usually do make your own pizza night with tons of ingredients to choose from, but asparagus was on sale and I have wanted to try this forever.

I know you wanted to see the plain cheese frozen pizza...

Basically you just peel strands of asparagus off with a vegetable peeler.  I actually prefer a normal one to a Y peeler.  It takes a few stalks to get the hang of it, and they will probably be uneven but it doesn’t matter!  I peel mine over a large bowl (saves a dish to clean), then simply add some olive oil and salt and pepper.  I also added sliced scallions and parmesan cheese to the pizzas.  As for the baking time, whenever I add my own stuff to the cheese pizzas, I always add a few mins (up to 10 depending on how much stuff you add) to the suggested baking time.  I highly recommend this super easy pizza dinner!  Plus it LOOKS super fancy and impressive.

Before baking

See? Doesn't it look fan-cay?!

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