Pizza Dinner

Every now and then we get adventurous and make a whole pizza from scratch. Usually its a last minute thing, so I look up a no rise pizza dough recipe and go from there. This time, Matt suggested early that we make pizza on focaccia bread. So with enough time before dinner to let the dough rise for an hour, I whipped up our favorite recipe. That recipe happens to come out of a Cuisinart promotional cookbook that we received in a goodie bag when registering for wedding gifts about 5 years ago. I don't think I have ever used any other recipe in that book, but that one is a winner. It is a basic focaccia dough, brushed with olive oil, salt, pepper, poppy seeds, and red pepper flakes, topped with thin sliced onion and baked to perfection. So good!

This is a little bit different take on that recipe. So grab your favorite focaccia bread recipe and get started on this pizza. You will be glad you did!

After the dough is made and risen, press it out into a 1/2 inch thick circle, on a pizza stone or pan. I only made half of my recipe, so depending on how much dough you have made you can make two pizzas, or make some bread sticks out of the remaining dough.

Brush the dough with olive oil and season to your liking. For this pizza I used red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and oregano. In a saute pan, slow cook onions, peppers, and mushrooms with a drizzle of olive oil so that they can caramelize a bit. Depending on your patience you can totally caramelize them, or just partially caramelize them if you are in a hurry to eat. I was :). After they are cooked to your liking, spread the vegetables evenly over the dough.

Top with some thinly sliced tomato.

Then bake it for about 12 minutes at the temperature your focaccia bread recipe suggests.

Slice and Enjoy!