Chicken Wing Pizza

The theme tonight is orange and green for Halloween, right down to dessert.

I decided to make a chicken-wing pizza, one of my favorites, but I didn't start preparing dinner until after 4 pm, and it's not a particularly warm day, to allow the dough to rise, so I scoured the internet for a "quick" pizza dough recipe - I found one that uses baking powder instead of yeast, but the rest of the recipe was almost identical to my original recipe, aka, the one I didn't like very much.  But I thought I would give this one a try.  Short version: as pizza crust, yuk.  It came out like baking powder biscuits.  And really, really dry and flaky, as opposed to "spongy" or "springy".  So I'm not even posting it here for you.



To make a decent chicken wing pizza, (on a good crust) I start by cooking some chicken.  This partial pack (1/3? 2/5? less than half anyway) of chicken I boiled on the stove to cook it.

Then I mixed up my "wing sauce".  Now, this is best made by mixing blue cheese dressing and hot sauce, but  I didn't have any blue cheese in the house so I used ranch with bacon (mmmm bacon).  I use a 3 parts dressing 1 part hot sauce ratio, and it seems to work well.

I diced the cooked chicken and 1/2 an onion and topped the pizza: sauce, then cheese, then chicken and onion. Normally, I also finely dice some celery to top this but I didn't have any of that either.


Then, we started dessert: green pistachio instant pudding (2 cups milk and 1 pudding mix)  I mixed it the 2 minutes according to the directions, then let my youngest "help stir".
We poured it into dixie cups and put it in the fridge.  This mix made five pudding cups.  To offer a little variety, I mixed up a jello mix and put that in the fridge, too, but everyone wanted the pistachio anyway.


Lastly, we mixed up our side dish: broccoli and cheese.  Although this is normally made with cheddar, I found that yellow American is "smoother", and it's cheaper, and the kids can't really tell the difference anyway.  All I did was steam the broccoli in the microwave for 2 minutes, put on 3 pieces of cheese, cook for one additional minute, then stir, add another 3 pieces of cheese, and cook for one additional minute.  Voila!



Everything was done, so we served and ate.  Again, I'm going to tell you that the crust was not very tasty.  My oldest nibbled at his until it looked like the Millennium Falcon (or so he says) and my youngest ate all the toppings off of his and "accidentally" dropped his crust on the floor.

But he liked the broccoli.  
So that's a bonus.

And the pudding was delicious.










Totals for tonight: Pizza crust was no more than $1.  The most expensive ingredient was 17 cents, and there were only six ingredients and no, I'm really, really not giving you the recipe, even to verify the cost.  It was that bad.  The cheese on top was a $2 bag of mozzarella.  Unfortunately, I used all of the mozzarella from this crazy cheap cheese purchase.  The chicken we're going to call $1.40, since it was slightly less than half of a $3.05 pack.  The 1/2 an onion was 7 cents.  The pudding was 95 cents - 45 cents' worth of milk, and a 50 cent pudding mix.  The broccoli was about 1/3 of a $1.88 pack, so 63 cents, and six slices of american cheese, sold in a 16-pack for 99 cents, would be 37 cents.  So... $1 crust + $2 cheese  +  $1.40 chicken  + 7 cents onion + 95 cent pudding + 63 cents broccoli + 37 cents cheese =

$6.42

I think that next time I'm going to buy a boxed pizza crust mix and see how that turns out.

It can't be any worse.

Fried Dough (for dessert) with something or other for food

The decision to make pizza for dinner tonight was actually based on my decision for dessert.  Ever since our evening at the Maple Festival, the kids have been clamoring for some fried dough.  Fried dough is very easy to make, and my pizza crust recipe (actually Betty Crocker's pizza crust recipe - to give credit where credit is due) makes enough dough for 2 pizzas.  So I usually take the extra dough and make cinnamon rolls.  Tonight, it will be fried. But first, there must be pizza. 

I spent 6 years, on and off, working as a short-order cook and waitress at Original Italian Pizza.  

As a result, I am rather particular about pizza.  Especially the toppings.  

I feel like I have some mystical ability.  Someone will announce that they're ordering pizza, and I'll volunteer a set of toppings, and there will be unanimous agreement.  Unless my dad is present.  He wants what he wants.


Tonight's was a "garlic pizza", made with roughly
1/4c "butter spread", 1 heaping teaspoon garlic, and 1/2 teaspoon italian seasoning, mixed separately and spread on top of the pizza crust, which I then topped with cheese.

Betty Crocker's pizza recipe is: Mix 1 c. flour with 1 packet (or 2 and 1/4 teaspoons, if you buy bulk, which I do) of instant yeast, and 1 tsp of salt and 1 tbsp of sugar.  I actually make it 1.5 tbsp of sugar, because I like my dough a little sweeter, and 2.5 tsp of yeast, because I like my dough a little fatter.  Add 1 cup of warm (but not hot) water and 3 tbsp oil.  Put in a cake mixer on medium speed and add between 1 and 2 and a half MORE cups of flour gradually, scraping the sides of the bowl as you go, until the dough sticks to the beaters completely and there's nothing left on the sides of the bowl.  Then, remove it from the bowl and knead it on a counter top that you've also covered with flour.  Knead for at least 5 minutes.  (You might want to knead a little more vigorously than my Emily here...She's kneading somewhat casually...)  When it's done, it should feel spongy and not sticky.  If your dough is sticky, put more flour on the counter and knead some more.  Split the dough into two balls (makes enough for 2 crusts, or 1 crust and 1 dessert) and coat each ball with oil (just pour some in your palm and rub it all over the ball, or spray it with baking spray.  

Flatten the dough balls into dough disks (maybe an inch thick) and put them back in your mixing bowl.  The oil will keep the two balls from sticking to each other.  Then cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for half an hour.  IF you don't have cling wrap that will stay on the sides of your bowl (because you DON'T want it to dry out) you can cover it with cheap saran wrap and then cover that with a plastic bag, folding the edge of the bag under the bowl.  

This is a "Pizzazz" (a wedding present from a good friend, Rebecca Stamilio).  It was an "as seen on TV" item back in 2002.  I have no idea where you'd even find one now.  I suppose normal people bake pizza in the oven at some number of degrees for some number of minutes.  I have no idea because I have one of THESE.

(ha ha)

Pizza was served with a simple salad of lettuce leaves and diced apples, with choice of dressing, followed by the amazing, the incredible, FRIED DOUGH!!!!!

o

Just spread out the dough as if you're making mini-pizzas, float them in the hot oil (remove the basket from the fryer if you're using one, or just heat oil in a frying pan), remove the hot dough with thongs, and sprinkle with powdered sugar.  You can also use cinnamon and sugar or cinnamon and powdered sugar.  Normally, I just sprinkle it on with a spoon, straight out of the canister.  Tonight, I tried to put it in a salt shaker.  That was a big mess with small returns, seeing as how the powdered sugar clumped together and clogged up the holes and I had to keep tapping it to get any out, and how I had to dirty a funnel to pour it in to begin with.  Then I ended up pouring it back in my larger canister afterwards, but I had to wash my salt shaker, and then fill it back up with salt, just to get back to where I'd started.

So if you're doing this at home, my recommendation is to just spoon it out of the bag and sprinkle it on.

Tonight's total is tricky because the homemade dough is difficult to calculate.  However, I'm going to do it this way: A 5-pound bag of flour can make 10 times this recipe (20 pizzas), and usually costs $4.  I would also need to buy a whole bag of sugar ($2.50) and a whole bag of yeast (although I wouldn't use the whole bag) at ($3), and a bulk bag of mozzerella cheese (which I buy quite often, actually) is $16.  So it would cost me $25.50 to make 10 times this recipe, putting it at roughly $2.55 per pizza + dough.  The salad is the same thing.  A whole head of lettuce, which makes enough salad to feed my family of 4 on 2 different nights, is usually less than $2 (actually about $1.59 when it's not on sale), so the lettuce for tonight was less than $1.  Even assuming the cost of the garlic, butter, seasonings, and salad dressing weren't included here, the total cost of dough, cheese, and lettuce was roughly $3.50, so it's safe to assume that tonight's dinner was under $10.  I'm going to go so far as to say under $5, since we didn't even have pepperoni on the pizza.