Pizza Night Part II – Canadian Pizza with a Twist

Last week I posted about our Sunday night pizza adventure!  We made pizza from scratch, dough and all.  We made Annie’s Chicken Ranch, an original Salmon Pesto and our spin on the traditional Canadian. I already shared the recipe for my take on Annie’s Chicken Ranch pizza, but this pizza was definitely CH’s favourite of the night.

A traditional ‘Canadian’ pizza is loaded with pepperoni, bacon, sliced green peppers, sliced mushrooms and mozzarella.  Without a doubt, if we order pizza (which we won’t anymore!) CH orders “Canadian’. I have no idea where Canadian pizza gets its name…I even googled it.  Sorry!

However, with Canadian being CH’s default pizza, I knew I had to create it but wasn’t satisfied with just the normal toppings.  To start, I used some leftover bolognese sauce I had in the freezer, instead of basic tomato sauce.  It added incredible depth to the pizza and a load of extra flavour.  I went to a local butcher and picked up some handmade Hungarian pepperoni, which had quite a bit of spice to it.  We added the usual crispy crumbled bacon (I pre-cooked my bacon in the oven!), green pepper and mushrooms, but for one more flavour enhancer, I added carmalized onions.  I slow cooked the onions in a pan with butter on the stove for almost an hour.  The flavour of the onions added a hit of sweetness to the pizza and balanced it all out really well.

While these sounds like time consuming additions, they really weren’t!  This was a fast pizza to assemble and offered an incredible amount of flavour.   This will definitely end up on our table again soon!

Enjoy!

Pizza Dough

Please see Annie’s Eats (Click Here: Perfect Pizza Crust)

Canadian Pizza with a Twist

Yeild:  1 medium pizza
Prep Time:  10 minutes (without dough – add additional time for dough preparation)
Cooking Time:  12 minutes pizza (add 30 mins – 1hr if you are going to make caramelized onions)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 batch of pizza dough crust
• 1/2 cup of tomato sauce (or bolognese sauce)
• 1.5 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup of thinly sliced pepperoni, whichever brand & spice level you like
• 1 green pepper, diced
• 10 mushrooms, sliced
• 1/4 cup of bacon, cooked and crumbled
• 1/2 cup of caramelized onions (see below for a link for how to make carelmelized onions) * you can also substitute raw onions

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees (and if you have a pizza stone, preheat that as well).  It is good to allow your pizza stone to pre-heat in a 500 degree oven for at least an additional 15 minutes.

If you have a pizza peel, lay that on the counter.  Otherwise, prepare a sheet of parchment paper (either square or cut to shape of your dough). [CH: If you don’t have either of those, hilarity will ensue when moving the pizza from counter to oven.]

Now, prepare your dough. On top of your parchment paper or your pizza peel, roll out the dough into a round pizza shape.  Leave an edge around outside for the crust. Once you’ve achieved the shape you desire, pinch the outside of the dough to create a crust. Then pierce the crust with a fork all the way around (this will prevent large air bubbles from forming in your crust while it bakes!).

Now, it’s time to assemble!  Pour the tomato sauce (or bolognese) over the unbaked pizza dough and spread with a spoon. Sprinkle about 3/4 of the shredded mozzarella over the tomato sauce. Scatter the caramelized onions, pepperoni, green peppers, mushrooms and bacon bits on top of the tomato sauce.  When layering, try to think of the end result…you want every piece of pizza to have a bit of every topping!   Finally, sprinkle the top of your pizza with the remaining mozzarella cheese.

Carefully move the pizza to your preheated oven/pizza stone.   Bake for 12 minutes or done to your liking (I like mine quite crisp and I added a minute of broiling at the end to make my cheese a little crispier!).

Let cool for 5 minutes.  Then, slice and devour.

An Original JBean Recipe

Caramelized Onions: Rachel Ray’s Tutorial