Chicken & Broccoli Stromboli

We eat some type of pizza in our house almost every week, so I am always looking for new and interesting combinations of toppings just so we can mix it up a little. For this meal, I used my regular pizza dough recipe, but cut it in half. We really enjoyed this stromboli. It was fun to eat and was even a little bit (dare I say) healthy.

I seasoned the chicken using Chef Todd's Pit Seasoning. It is a great blend of spices that I use all the time. If you don't have this seasoning mix, you can use a combination of garlic, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper. It won't be exactly the same, but that is what I used to do before I discovered my new favorite seasoning.

Pizza dough

3/4 lb chicken, cut into small pieces
2 tsp olive oil
1/2 of a medium onion, finely chopped
Chef Todd's Pit Seasoning, to taste
1 red pepper, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
fresh broccoli florets
fresh spinach leaves
mozzarella cheese
Alfredo sauce for dipping

Prepare the pizza dough. While it is raising, preheat oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil glistens, add onion and saute for 4-5 minutes or until it starts to become transparent. Then add chicken and seasoning and cook until the chicken is done.

Roll out pizza dough (between 1/8" and 1/4" thickness) in a rectangle about 18" long and 11" wide. Layer spinach, chicken and onions, red pepper, tomato, broccoli, and then mozzarella cheese down the center of the dough. Fold each side of dough over and pinch to close. Bake on 400° for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and spread a small amount of butter over the surface of the crust to add flavor and maintain moisture. Cut into pieces and serve with Alfredo sauce or marinara sauce.

Pizza Rolls

These were actually just a little experiment that I decided to do for the Super Bowl. They turned out to be a huge hit! Even though I layered the sauce, pepperoni, and cheese and rolled it all up together, I think it would also work if you just rolled up the dry ingredients and dipped them in sauce. I actually used the same dough to make cinnamon rolls as well.

Yeild: about 10 servings (I often cut the dough recipe in half and my husband and I still always have leftovers)

1 recipe pizza dough
Spaghetti Sauce
Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
Pepperoni

Prepare dough as directed. Preheat oven to 375°. Roll dough out into a rectangle that is approximately 18"x12" and about 1/8" thick. If you use the entire dough recipe, this will be enough to make two or three different rolls. Cover dough with a thin layer of spaghetti sauce, then pepperoni (I like to put the pepperoni slices so close to each other that they are nearly touching) and a layer of cheese. Then roll it up and use a sharp knife to cut the rolls into 1" slices. Place on a greased baking sheet and cook for about 20-25 minutes.

Pizza Sauce

I found this recipe on myrecipes.com when I was looking for an authentic New York style sauce and decided to try it. I have to say that it really tastes nothing like New York pizza sauce, but I still liked it a lot and would definitely use it again. 

1 14.5 oz can petite diced tomatoes

1 can tomato paste

1 tsp minced garlic

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp oregano

2 tsp basil

1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil

7 Tbsp water

Salt to taste

Combine ingredients in a medium bowl. This does not need to be cooked before using on pizza.

New York Pizza Crust

For lunch on Saturday, my husband and I decided to go to Este Pizza, a local pizza place that he has had several times with some buddies, but I had never tried. They advertise "real New York pizza," which is hard to find when you live more than 2000 miles away from the Big Apple. We loved their thin crust, and flavorful pizza sauce so much that we had to go home and try to make it ourselves. After doing a little bit of research, we finally settled on this recipe - which was posted by a couple of different people on their blogs and on recipe websites. It was a decent crust, although I think my normal crust would have tasted pretty similar if I had rolled it out pretty thin and baked it on a high temperature.

1 cup warm water

1 Tbsp yeast

1/2 Tbsp sugar

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 1/2 tsp salt

3 cups flour


Combine water, yeast, sugar, and 1/2 cup flour in a mixing bowl and let rest for 10-15 minutes or until yeast has activated and mixture becomes foamy. Add olive oil, salt, and 2 cups flour, stirring until well combined. Knead for ten minutes, adding flour to reduce stickiness as necessary. Drizzle a small amount of olive oil, cover, and let rise for approximately 2 hours or until double in size. 


Roll out dough so it is VERY thin. Cook dough for 8 minutes on 425° before adding toppings, then spread New York style sauce over it, and top with mozzarella cheese and the toppings of your choice. Bake until crust is light brown and crispy.

Stuffed Chicken Bacon Pizza

In all honesty, this has been an amazing month for cooking. Somehow nearly everything I make for dinner has been "the best                we've ever had;" so this was the best pizza we have ever made. I used the same pizza crust that I usually do except I let it rise for about 45 minutes, then rolled it out and let it rise for about another 15 minutes before baking it. I don't usually let it rise at all so I think that is why it turned out so fluffy and delicious. This was also a pizza that we kind of copied; Papa Murphy's has great stuffed pizzas. Although we didn't use the same ingredients, they were our inspiration.

First layer toppings:
Homemade Alfredo Sauce
Chicken cooked with garlic, salt, pepper, and basil

Red and Yellow Peppers
Bacon
Artichoke Hearts
Tomatoes
Red Onions
Green Onions
Mushrooms
Mozzarella Cheese

Second layer toppings
Black Olives
Red Peppers
Mozzarella cheese

I rolled out the dough a little more thin than usual. I folded over the bottom dough and pinched it together with the top dough before baking it at 425 for about 20 minutes.

Chicken Alfredo Pizza

My brother and sister-in-law have a family tradition of eating pizza every Friday night and yesterday they invited us to their pizza party. We each made a pizza to share. They were planning on making a more traditional pizza with marinara sauce so I decided to do something a little different. This was a great pizza and a fun change to the traditional homemade pepperoni.

Pizza dough
Ragu Roasted Garlic Parmesan sauce
1 chicken breast, cut into pieces
1/4 lb bacon, in small pieces
1/4 cup ham, in small squares
1/2 lb mushroom slices
Mozzarella cheese

Prepare toppings by cooking chicken breast (seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic, and basil) and bacon and slicing ham and mushrooms. Spread sauce over uncooked pizza dough. Top with mozzarella cheese and then toppings. Bake at 400° for about 20 minutes.

Stuffed Crust Pizza

If Pizza Hut can do it, why can't I? I am surprised that I had never even thought of filling my own pizza crust with cheese before yesterday. What a great idea! It worked out very well. The only thing I might change for next time is rolling the dough a little thinner on the edges so that there is proportionately more cheese to bread.

I started out by making the same pizza dough that I usually use, let it rise for the usual time, and rolled it out so that it was a little bigger than my pan (in this case I used a pizza stone). At the time I only had pre-shredded mozzarella cheese to work with, but I think that bigger strips of mozzarella cheese would make the process even easier. I made lines of cheese close to the edge of my pizza and folded the dough over top. It didn't seem to have any trouble sticking or holding its shape.

Then I spread the sauce, cheese and toppings and baked as usual. I didn't even have to increase the cooking time. When it came out of the oven I spread garlic butter on the edges to make them more like bread sticks. My stuffed crust pizza tasted great and was a lot of fun.

Pizza Pockets

One of my family's traditions was that we always got to choose our birthday dinner. Which meant we had Pizza Pockets for pretty much every birthday. If someone chose something different, we were always disappointed. Now that I'm "all grown up" and get to choose my dinner every night we end up having these a lot more often than when I was a kid. My husband has even said that they are his new favorite. We always used to make these with Rhodes frozen rolls, but lately I have been using homemade pizza dough - which is cheaper and I think it tastes even better.

1 pkg. Rhodes frozen rolls
Spaghetti sauce
Mozzarella cheese
Pepperoni
Sausage

Thaw rolls. With rolling pin, roll our each individual roll into an oval shape. If you want bigger pockets, roll 2 rolls together. Put desired toppings in one half (no sauce). We always use pepperoni, sausage, and mozzarella cheese. Once we tried using other toppings and decided that the traditional way was a lot better. Fold dough over and pinch around sides and ends. Puncture top with a fork. Bake at 425 for 15-20 minutes. To eat, dip in spaghetti sauce and remember: no silverware allowed!

Buffalo Chicken Pizza

This pizza looked and smelled delicious. It was a great idea that I would make again, with just a few alterations. We used blue cheese dressing as the base sauce and found out that you have to really like blue cheese in order to like this pizza. It was a little bit overpowering for us. Next time I think I'll use ranch as the base sauce.

Blue cheese or ranch dressing
red and green peppers, chopped
white onions, chopped
mozzarella cheese
buffalo chicken pieces (see recipe for Chicken Wing Sauce)

Barbecue Ranch Pizza

It has been about two weeks since I have posted recipes on my blog. Surprisingly I have felt pretty guilty about not posting. I almost felt like I was letting my hypothetical readers down. I think there are some people out there following this blog, and hopefully even trying out some of my recipes. This pizza was definitely one worthy of replication. I took a risk with this one by combining Ranch and BBQ sauce (I definitely had doubts as to whether they would go well together.)

Ranch
Barbecue Sauce
Chicken
Bacon ends and pieces
Onions
Sun-dried tomatoes
Mozzarella cheese
Cheddar cheese

Garden Pizza

One day after snowboarding my husband and I discovered that we love vegetable pizzas - especially when we add sausage. I made this one for him yesterday when he was home from work (too sick to work but not too sick to enjoy a good lunch!)

This dough recipe is the same one that we always use and can be found in the bread section of this blog.

Toppings:
Fresh mushrooms
Sliced tomatoes
Red pepper, chopped
Fresh spinach, chopped
Canned artichoke, chopped
Black olives, sliced
Onions, chopped
1/2 lb cooked sausage
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Feta cheese

First spread sauce over rolled out dough, then cover with mozzarella cheese, all vegetables, and sausage. I only put olives on about half of the pizza. I sprinkled a little bit of mozzarella and feta over top and baked at 425 for about 20 minutes.

Pepperoni Pizza

Homemade pizza has been one of the staples in my family for as long as I can remember. When we make pepperoni pizza we always put the cheese on top. This is an excellent recipe that has never failed.

2 1/4 cups warm water
2 Tbsp quick rise yeast
2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
7-8 cups flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water.  Add salt, sugar, and 3 cups flour. Mix well. Stir in eggs and oil, slowly adding flour. Mix until it becomes a dough that is soft but not sticky. Let dough rest 10 minutes. Divide into about 3 portions and roll out. Bake at 425° for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

This pizza has pepperoni, sausage, green and red peppers, white onions, sliced tomatoes, fresh mushrooms, and black olives. It turned out great!

I also made some garlic and cheese bread sticks. I melted about 2 Tbsp of butter and poured it over top and sprinkled a little bit of minced garlic and garlic salt over it. I topped it with about 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese and baked it at 350° for about 20 minutes.