June 24, 2010

Skillet Pizza!

One of the things I love to do is make something deluxe when there is seemingly nothing to eat in my house. You can open up the fridge, and look in the pantry and think there is nothing to make. That’s how it was over the weekend, our power was out for a long time and I had to throw some food out, and I hadn’t gone to the store yet.

It was approaching lunch; my family would be hungry soon. That’s when I thought “Skillet Pizzas!” I know how to make dough; my sister has perfected a “no rise” dough, so you can make that in no time. I had pureed tomatoes in my freezer, I could turn that into pizza sauce, I had some onions, some Italian sausage also in my freezer, and about 5 nubs of different kinds of cheeses that I just grated on to a plate.

Why skillet pizzas? Because it was so hot outside I didn’t want to turn the oven on. Have I ever tried this before? Nope! I hoped it would work, because I didn’t have a plan B!

The dough:

1 cup flour
½ cup warm water
2 tsp. yeast
½ tsp. salt

In a small bowl add the water and yeast and let sit for 5 minutes. In a mixer with a dough hook, add the flour and salt, add the water/yeast mixture and mix for 5 minutes. The dough is kind of sticky, so flour your hands and pinch off some dough for the first pizza.

For this recipe 3 oz. of dough is 150 calories, for my pizza, I used 2.5 oz. of dough and rolled it out to fit my small skillet.

In the small skillet I added about a teaspoon of olive oil, placed the dough in the pan and cooked for 5 minutes.

Poke the dough with a fork so it doesn't puff up

I cooked that over medium heat for 3 minutes. Turn over and it will look like this:

After 3 minutes, flip over and you are ready to add toppings!

Have the toppings ready, once you flip the dough, add the sauce and whatever ingredients you want (I cooked the sausage first) and top with cheese. Place a lid over the skillet and this will help melt the cheese.