In All You Do...marriage, parenting, schooling, cooking, cleaning...Breed Love: Baking Bits: Homemade Cheeseburger Pizza

We make this at least every other week at our house!! Over the past year in my quest to cook more meals for my family, we have tried several pizza dough recipes. This is by far our most favorite! Well…actually, we’ve tweaked it to fit how we like our crust, so I’m going to give you our version of it.

And right now, I'm going to apologize for the lack of ingredient pictures and possibly the poor quality. Some 3yr old child, who shall remain nameless, has messed with my camera and I'm not quite sure what he's done to the settings! Isn't it so frustrating when your children can mess things up that you can't fix? Please tell me that happens to you too.

Let's make some pizza...maybe that will make me feel better. Here goes!

This is my crummy ingredient picture. Not even everything here!
So sorry about that!!

To Make the Crust, you’ll need:

Active Dry Yeast

White sugar

Warm water (110^oF)

Bread flour (white/wheat flour will work too)

Olive oil

Salt

Preheat oven to 450^oF. In a medium bowl, dissolve 1 packet (or 2¼ tsp) active dry yeast and 2 tsp sugar in the warm water.

Once dissolved let it stand until creamy, approx 10 minutes*. See how it looks a little frothy? That's what you want.

Stir in 5cups flour, 4TBSP oil and 2tsp oil.

Isn't this such a great picture? I just love it!! Such a pretty mixer...

Beat until smooth. I usually beat it until the sides are mostly clean. Notice the difference in the two above pictures? Notice how little dough there is on them. Well...that and the dough falls off the hook. That's another way to tell you've beat it smooth.

Let it rest for 5 minutes. It will “grow” a little, but not quite double. (See those sides are pretty clean!)

Divide dough in half and roll out onto a pizza pan lightly dusted with cornmeal. (Or use your well seasoned Pampered Chef stone and you don’t need the cornmeal.)

Homemade Pizza Sauce

I found this recipe several years ago and used it for quite a while. But, again…we’ve tweaked it. *NOTE: I usually start the sauce during the 10 minutes my dough is at “rest.” Here is what you'll need to make this sauce.

You’ll need:

Tomato Sauce

Tomato Paste

water

Garlic powder

Oregano

Basil

Italian Seasonings

My oldest and my niece "fighting the bad guys" in our backyard with vacuum cleaner attachments!
I feel so protected...wouldn't you?!

Okay, you'll have to really forgive me here. I forgot to take pictures of this part as I was juggling 2 extra kiddos at my house while trying to make these. IMeanwhile, I hope you enjoy these few pics I snapped of the kids in action!

My nephew, digging...I think!

My oldest daughter "cheese-ing" for the camera.
I guess she thought I needed the peanut oil...

Okay, so back to the sauce...(I promise to take pics the next time I make this and update the post! Promise...Promise!)

Pour small can of tomato sauce and two small cans of tomato paste and a tomato paste can of water into a small saucepan. Heat on med-low.
When the sauce is just about boiling, dump in all your seasonings. Now, I wish I could tell you how much I use, but honestly after making it several times I just put in what I think looks good. However, I did start out with the same measurements she uses at Heavenly Homemakers (link above). And, yes…I know Italian Seasonings have the other three in there, but I just like the way it looks, so I add it too! Yes…my kids think I’m silly.
Turn heat down and simmer sauce until ready to use.

Now for the toppings!!! Are you ready?? Okay…here we go! Now, as you probably noticed above, this dough makes two pizzas. And, since our kids don’t like the cheeseburger one…silly kids…we make a plain bacon pizza for them. So, I make that one first.

And, yes…I cheat and use Bacon bits. I do, however, shred my own cheese so that more than makes up for my lack of being a good parent when I use bacon bits, right?!

Before topping our pizzas, we baste the dough with an olive oil/Italian seasonings mixture.

Spread sauce onto pizza. Use how much you like to make it very saucy or not so much. You’ll have plenty, trust me! I usually have enough left over for some nice dipping of the crusts!

Sprinkle some cheese over the sauce. We use mozzarella for the bacon pizza, but my oldest requested half of it with just cheddar…so there ya go!

Sprinkle how ever much bacon you’d like on top of the cheese.

Then we like to add a light sprinkle of cheese over the top of the bacon too. Yes…we like cheesy pizza!

Bake the pizza at 450^oF for 20-25 minutes. You want the crust to be slightly golden, but make sure it’s completely cooked. So we usually lift up the edge with a metal spatula to see if it’s done.

Cut and serve! ENJOY!!!

Now, while my first pizza is cooking, I take the 20 minutes to cut up my ingredients for the Cheeseburger pizza.

Here’s what you’ll need: (again, I'll take a picture of this next time too)

Pizza Sauce

Mustard

Onion (The Hubster likes red onion)

Browned hamburger/turkey

Pickles

Mozzarella Cheese

Cheddar Cheese

Anything else you like on your cheeseburgers…

You’ll need to get the meat browning if it’s not already done. I don’t add any seasonings to it, since we’re putting onion on the pizza anyway. But, you could add a little onion powder if you like.

Dice your onion and pickles.

Roll out the dough on your pan lightly sprinkled with cornmeal (or use a well used one like ours). Again, we baste the dough with an olive oil/Italian seasonings mixture.

Okay...so I forgot to take a picture of the round with just sauce. Sue me!

Spread a light amount of sauce on the dough at first (trust me, you can add more later if you want).

Next comes the “secret ingredient”…mustard. Yep! You might think its crazy, but oh wait until you taste it!! Just trust me. Well…as long as you like mustard it will be yummy! Squirt mustard all over the sauce.

Now you’re going to mix the mustard and sauce together on the dough. I find using a spoon works best. Now…if I was making 2 cheeseburger pizzas (or 3 like I did last weekend when my brother came in town), you could actually mix the mustard into the sauce while its still in the pan and it would be fine.

Sprinkle some mozzarella and cheddar cheese over your sauce mixture.

Add the browned meat. Make sure it’s broken up a little so you don’t have big clumps.

Add your onions and pickles.

If you want, you can add bacon and make it a bacon-cheeseburger pizza!

Sprinkle a little more cheese over the top. You can never have too much cheese on a pizza! Oh my word...that's starting to look yummy, don't you think?!