Pizzeria Calvin

We've been talking about making pizza for dinner the past couple nights, that means that eventually we'll get around to it. Maybe we have to build up the idea in our head, or build the want and need for fresh home-made pizza. The need, want and eagerness were all present tonight. A trip to Pizzeria Calvin (ok Ben's kitchen) for both deep dish and thin crust pizza. That's one of the best things about making home-made pizza you can tailor it to your taste you can add toppings without making it a 20 dollar pizza and you can enjoy the freshness and joy of making pizza just as good, or better than you're local joint.


We cheat. Let's just put it out there. I should give you my recipe for pizza dough and tell you I let it rise and kneaded it. But for $1.89 (thats how much ours cost) you can buy a ready made pizza dough in the refrigerated section of any grocery store. This dough say 11 servings, but Ben and I turned out 2 medium size pizzas from one bag. We also bough fresh made pizza sauce from our grocery store. It was a very basic sauce, vine ripened tomatoes, oils, oregano and spices. That was all was in the sauce we used. This was a really fun dinner that got both of us in the kitchen cooking, tossing pizza dough in the air, and having a good time. I recommend this for families or a date night. Simple, easy and good.



Almost Everything Healthy Toppings Pizza
1 bag refrigerated dough
1 container pizza sauce
1 package part skim mozzarella
1 green bell pepper
7 or 8 chopped mushrooms
2 vine ripened tomatoes
1 medium onion
1 chicken breast*

*You can either buy the ready made refrigerated chicken slices or do what we did quickly sautéed a breast with just salt and pepper, and cut into strips.


I recommend first chopping all of your veggies so that they are the right size to go on your pizza, this will make assembly a lot faster. If you want to make 2 separate pizzas like we did, you should divide your dough in half, or into as many pizzas as you want. Then stretch your dough. The best way is to get your dough on your finger tips and pill slightly to stretch it into a circle. Don't forget to rotate so that you get almost a circle. If you are brave you can toss the dough in the air. Ben was good at it. Me not so much. You want it pretty thin, about or a little less than 1/8 inch thick.


I added the pizza sauce to the top of my dough on a Pamed pan. I added my first layer of cheese and then topped off my pizza with all of the raw veggies and the sauteed chicken breast pieces and then another layer of cheese just to top it off.


Ben wanted a deep dish pizza, he used a 9 inch round cake pan. He stretched the dough so that it would just hang over the edge of the pan but slightly dip into the corners so that he would get a nice edge on his pizza. He put down sauce, all the toppings and then more sauce and a thick layer of cheese. We baked both at 450 degrees, Ben's the deep dish went for about 20 minutes while mine was about 15. I think Ben's came out looking professional. They both tasted amazing. Fun, Healthy, Easy, and cheap, what more could you want?