Sunday Pizza: 01.23.2011

Stuffed Crust ready to bake!

Do you ever have one of those Sundays where you look forward to Monday?  If you have kids you probably know what I'm talking about. Right around 6:30 I said, "Man, I can't wait for Monday!"  Did I feel guilty?  Puh-lease!

Here's the skinny ... Sat morning C practically buzzed Z's hair.  [Turns out he is a cutie and can wear it short and C continues to remind me it will grow back]  While prepping Z for a military career C noticed his ear had nasty stuff coming out of it.  blah.  There goes soccer - here we come doctor!  Turns out Z has an ear infection and slight pneumonia.  Poor little guy.  [he has tubes in both ears, hence the nasty stuff]  Sat night C had a fever too.  What's going on?

Sit n Spin

We almost cancelled all Sunday plans but C and Z made miraculous recoveries by Sunday morning.  Way to go!  We watched the Bears wear their uniforms and pass to the wrong team for a couple hours.  Dreadful.

Thin crust with all different size slices

Luckily, Z's and his buddy Elliott go to school together so he's long been exposed to anything Z has [pretty much screwed] and his parents were comfortable coming over.  The boys fought like brothers from minute one.  Z and E and their parents decided to skip making pizzas this week.  phew.

In honor of the Bears game we decided to make an official stuffed pizza.  Well, official might be pushing it since C insisted on going light on the cheese.  We treated ourselves to a 12" cast iron skillet to make a larger pie to feed 6 adults.  As you can see above we also made our traditional thin crust.

Enough sausage, ya think?

What makes it truly Chicago is the wall to wall sausage layer on the bottom. Um... Yum!  We blind baked the crust, then layered with cooked sausage, cooked spinach, red bell pepper, then cheese.  Finally, we topped it with a thick layer of sauce.  My mom will tell you too much sauce...

The one error we made is to not cook the pepper.  Pre-cooking toppings release their liquids so the dough doesn't get soggy.  The dough was a little soggy but everyone claimed to love it nonetheless.  Next time, we'll cook all non-cheese toppings and blind bake the crust longer.  All part of the journey.