Pizza Party for One

I'm a major pizza fan.  Matt and I could single-handedly put Cici's Pizza and their all-you-can-eat pizza buffet out of business if we wanted.  But then we wouldn't have anymore all-you-can-eat pizza and that would be a sad world to live in.  It's not like I think Cici's is the best pizza around - far from it - but when it comes to pizza, I'm willing to try it in any form.

With such a love for this Italian specialty, it was only a matter of time before I took it on myself.  I often passed by the pizza dough in the refrigerated section of the grocery store only to leave without putting it in my buggy.  To me, dough = baking, and we all know I'm no baker.  But with the long weekend ahead of me, I decided it was time to experiment.

As I tried to devise my recipe, I came up with too many topping combinations to choose just one, so I decided to split the dough in half and make two different pizzas.  The first had pesto as a base, artichoke hearts, ricotta, and lemon zest.  The other had marinara, buffalo mozzarella, wild mushrooms sauteed with rosemary, and truffle oil.  Since the only thing I actually had to cook (other than baking off the pizzas) was the mushroom and that's pretty easy to pull off, the whole meal only took about 20 minutes to make, including bake time.

It's all about picking quality ingredients and assembling them properly.  While we're on the subject of quality ingredients, the only thing I would change would be the pizza dough.  When I decided to take on pizza, the store didn't have real pizza dough so I used the Pillsbury brand.  All Pillsbury products are exactly the same.  The dough tastes identical regardless of the packaging so my pizza was basically on a thin crescent roll.  It was fine but not authentic.  Now that I've found good topping combos, I may have to try the real deal dough.  Pretty soon, I'll be good enough to say itsa pizza pie like a real Italian, you know, like Super Mario.