Thursday, March 19, 2009

World's Best Homemade Pizza

I am many things, one thing I am not, is modest about my pizza. I am a firm believer in Boboli pizza shells. As a result, you might claim that my pizza is not really homemade. In response, I ask you who really wants to eat soggy pizza? Most of the time when I make or eat pizza made with dough from scratch and NOT cooked in a pizza oven, that is exactly how it turns out... SOGGY. Since I am making after-work-dinner, I need something that is quick and delicious. So I use Boboli Thin Crust Pizza shells which means every time my pizza is crunchy and fantastic

Ok, enough advertising (and I didn't even get paid for it!) The pizza shell isn't all that makes my pizza amazing, in fact it's so amazing I didn't even get a photo of it before I cut it OR before I took a bite.


When I made pizza the two most important factors are a crunchy crust (which I believe I have already covered) and LOTS of toppings.

This story isn't really about the pizza or the shell, it's about mother daughter cooking from a distance. A couple of weeks ago I was dreaming about a pesto chicken pizza and as I walked home from work I was talking with my Mom on the phone and I told her what I was thinking. Her response was, "Wow, that sounds amazing, I am going to make that for dinner too!"

What's cool is that I am a avid cook because my Mom is a great cook. She reinvented her cooking to be more healthy when I was around 10 and at the same time made herself an AMAZING chef. I didn't complain before when we were eating sloppy joes and homemade mac & cheese (who would?) As an adult, I appreciate all the effort that she put into cooking healthy, which probably has a lot to do with how healthy JR and I eat. Having lots of healthy pizza toppings is just part of this.

So any way, back to the pizza, it was really quite simple. First I took a Boboli pizza shell and spread it with pesto. Then I took some chicken and I grilled it up in a black pepper marinade from McCormick. This is a total family secret, and since I am letting it loose, go buy this stuff right now.


I sliced the chicken nice and thin and put it on the pizza with a topping of sun dried tomatoes.


Then I sauteed some red and green peppers and sweet onions which I season liberally with red pepper (did I mention I like my spice?) I threw a heaping bunch of peppers and onions on the pizza and covered it with LOTS of mozzarella.


The second secret of the night is to place the pizza directly on the oven rake before baking it according to the Boboli instructions on the pack. This will insure it's crunchy-ness. The pizza was great and we really enjoyed it.

The cool thing is my Mom totally spun the recipe on her own and then sent me photos! She used broccoli instead of the red peppers and feta cheese instead of the mozzarella. Knowing her track record, I am sure it was also an amazing pizza!

2 comments:

Marji Roy said...

Boboli Pizza shells have been the basis for a quick and easy supper for years. What made this one special was using the pesto and chicken instead of pizza sauce. What Karen didn't mention is the convenience of the individual Boboli pizzas. i could make individual pizzas for the kids without those terrible adult things- peppers, mushrooms and onions as they passed through various picky eating phases. And then there were the "Make your own Pizza" parties with friends. Do they even make the individual shells anymore?

Damian said...

To make homemade pizza dough crunchy you should get a pizza stone, then you can add rosemary to the dough or whatever other spices that you like and then it is doubly delicious.