Over Efforting the Pizza

At my new job, I work 4-9 hours a day 6 days a week. So on my day off, I like to do as much as I can with my time. After going to the gym yesterday, I had to figure out dinner. Pizza would be quick and easy, but I was bored with the usual veggie/sausage. I wanted something different and a little sweeter.

Which made me think of BBQ chicken pizza.

I had been roasting chicken thighs at under 300 degree heat for about 3 hours, and added a thrown together BBQ sauce in about an hour ago. It turned into a thick, sweet, bbq saturated mass of delciousness. Matt told me that 45 minutes at 350 with the size of the thighs would have more than sufficed, but when did I ever do anything the easy way? I was home, reading and studying Bruegger's material, and had time to kill. What trouble was it to let chicken slow cook?

I suffered horribly as I caramelized two onions. But the end justified the means. The caramelized onions were worth the eye squinting watery pain when I spread it across my tomato sauce sweetened with what was left of the bbq sauce.

You know what? I really miss good parm. When I go to any grocery store I always pause in the cheese section, pick up a hunka hunka aged Parmesan and inhale. The fruity and nutty notes of incredible hard cheese makes me want to spend the 15.99 a pound pricetag.The real stuff goes so well sprinkled lightly on top of pizza. But for now, I just have the mozzarella and provolone.

The pizza came out really well, I bought a jar of yeast at the store and feed it with honey and a little molasses for a change of pace, so the dough has a darker tinge to it, but is still chewy and tender. Using chicken thighs really gave the pizza a deeper chicken flavor and the condensed flavors of the bbq sauce enhanced the pizza overall.
It was a really nice change to our usual pizza night. Can't wait to make it again! Maybe next time I'll do an Alfredo like sauce or even just a sauceless pizza!