Bacon Pizza and Sausage Pizza

Do those pictures really need any introduction? Nah, I don’t think so. Just scroll down and read the rest.

Ingredients

two pizza crusts
2 cups (or a little more) your favorite red sauce
1/2 pound super-lean sausage
1/2 pound bacon ends (see note below)
1-1/2 pounds shredded mozzarella / provolone mix

Directions

On each crust, put a cup of sauce in the middle. With the back of a large spoon, spread the sauce out almost to the edge using a circular motion.

Completely cover the sauce with the shredded cheese. (Remember you’ve got two pies, so split the cheese in half.)

Yes, I know New York style is to use slices of cheese, and they don’t cover the sauce like I do. They also so a super-thin, floppy crust that you have to fold in half to eat. And they cook them in a brick oven at 800°. Can we just agree that this is not New York style? Okay then. Now repeat this for the other crust.

Pull off little bits of the sausage with your fingers and spread them over the pizza.

That’s right, we’re not cooking the sausage first. With most sausage you’d have to, otherwise you’d end up with a pool of grease on top of the pizza. But this is so lean you don’t have to worry about that.

Next, cut the bacon ends into bite-size pieces.

And distribute them over the top of the second crust.

That’s right, we’re not pre-cooking the bacon either. Once again, lean pork products don’t give up as much grease.

You’ll have to go to the butcher to get the ends, you won’t find them packaged at the grocery store. They’re typically much leaner than the rest of the bacon, and about half the price. Yup, a butter cut [AAAARGH! I mean better cut] costs less, because most people don’t want it. Just because it isn’t as pretty. But we’re chopping it up so who cares about pretty?

Anyway, cover the pizza really well. If bacon is good, more bacon is better.

Then give it a light sprinkling with a little more cheese. I really like the pieces of bacon with cheese baked on top of them.

Pre-heat the oven to 500°. I didn’t put this note up higher, because I don’t know how long your oven takes. I turned mine on before I started the sauce, and it was ready long before I was. But make sure it’s completely warmed up before you put the pies in.

If you have a pizza stone, have that in the oven before you turn it on. If you’re using a stone, remember that you’ll only be able to do one pie at a time. You’ll also need a peel. That’s the huge wooden spatula pizzerias used to put the assembled pie in the oven.

Bake until the crust is golden brown, and the cheese is bubbly and starting to brown on the edges.

If you read the timestamps on those photos you’ll see that the picture of the finished sausage pie was taken 16 minutes after the picture of me assembling it. So total oven time was probably less than 15 minutes.

The bacon pie came out just a couple of minutes later.

Let the pie rest for a few minutes before slicing. You want the top of the cheese to cool off just enough that it doesn’t stick to your knife or pizza cutter when you’re cutting it.

The sausage will be much lighter in color than you’re used to from take-out pizza.

They can’t put fresh sausage on their pies, so yours is going to be much more tender. And you’ll taste the seasoning in the sausage, not just the flavor of the crustiness from the frying.

As for the bacon, it will look (and taste) a bit more like Canadian bacon than what you usually get on pizza.

If you prefer crispier bacon, you can of course fry it up a little bit before topping the pizza. Remember that you’re going to be putting it into a really hot oven, so don’t cook it all the way to done or it will burn on the pie.

And that’s it.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Oh, who am I kidding. I’ve still got the “food porn” shot of the bacon pie.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go re-heat the last two slices of leftovers. (In the toaster oven of course. Jeez, you don’t microwave bacon pizza, it’ll turn to rubber.)