Onion and Mushroom Pizza

Recipe Title: Onion and Mushroom Pizza

Recipe Link: http://delectablyfree.com/2010/02/caramelized-onion-and-shitake-pizza/

Status: Needs some work, but has potential

Rating: 4/10

Jen's Notes: This is one of those cases where I probably should have stuck to the recipe. Instead, I embellished and it didn't turn out to be an improvement. But, I have hope that this can be saved so keep on reading to learn from my mistakes.

First off, for the pizza dough, I substituted Bob's Red Mill Pizza Crust mix. I didn't have any pizza pans, so I decided to use one of my big cookie sheets (ala Bigfoot style). I wasn't sure how much of the dough to use, so I used all of it. I think that 3/4 or 1/2 of the dough would have worked out better, but it really depends on how you like your crust. Using the whole bag made it soft and chewy, and we usually like our pizza crust crispier. Next time, I'm going to take it out of the pan after the dough is in the oven the first time and cook the pizza directly on the oven rack. This will either make the pizza crispy, or make a huge mess in the oven, or both. Keep your eyes peeled to find out!

Another dough issue is that it ended up being very uneven when I pulled it out of the oven the first time. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get the dough even next time (it certainly looked even when I finished shaping the dough), but I might try breaking out the old rolling pin.

TIP: Make the dough first, so that it can rise while you work on getting the toppings ready.

Next, the toppings. Because I am too cheap to buy shiitake mushrooms (you'll find this is a recurring theme for me), I bought a bag of regular baby bellas. I also decided to add some lean ground beef because the hubby gets cranky if there is not meat in his dinner. And because I love garlic, I tossed in a couple cloves of diced garlic. Then I decided to add in some pizza sauce (Chef Boyardee) - and I think this was my biggest mistake of the meal. After I tossed the toppings in a little olive oil and the dough had gone through round one in the oven, I covered the dough in sauce and toppings and popped it in the oven for the recommended time (which was plenty, for once).

The end result? Well, the toppings tasted very yummy together, so I plan to use the same combination next time. However, as I talked about up top, the dough was softer than we like. Second, I believe because of the added pizza sauce, there was way too much liquid on the pizza. In places, the dough was soggy. I suspect this was due in part to the unevenness of the dough. I think the pizza sauce pooled and then soaked through the low spots in the crust. In spite of all of this, the pizza was pretty tasty but definitely needs some work. Sure, we had to use a fork to eat the pizza but it was still good.

Moral of the story? Sometimes it's a good idea to resist the impulse to embellish.

Prep Time: 50 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Start to Finish: 1 hour, 10 minutes.