Recipe - Chicken Alfredo Pizza

One of the things that I have always wanted to try making was my own pizza. Luckily one day, my friend decided that she wanted a cooking adventure with me and picked pizza as our experimental dish. After some shopping, we snagged everything to prepare ourselves for a great time. Because our toppings ended up being too much, we made two pizzas instead of one. The following recipe is only enough dough, butter, and sauce for one pizza but the toppings (chicken, tomato, and spinach) are for two so if you want to skimp anywhere, skimp on the toppings.

Because we made two pizzas, we were able to learn a bit from the first and fix some things we saw when making it. Both times, however, the pizza dough was quite bready, almost making the thing an elaborate breadstick. The crust turned out very well but if the pizza sits for too long, the sauce soaks into the bready crust and makes it a big soggy. However, if you like bread-heavy pizza, this is great!

Step 1: Ingredients (serving size: 12-inch pizza)

      Sauce

• ground black pepper (to taste)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup Romano cheese, grated
• 1 cup milk
• 4 tbsps butter
• 4 tbsps all-purpose flour

      Garlic Butter Sauce

• garlic salt (to taste)
• parsley, dried (to taste)
• 2 tbsps butter, softened

      Dough

• spicy Italian seasoning (to taste)
• 1/4 oz instant yeast
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp white sugar
• 1 cup warm water
• 2 tbsps vegetable oil
• 3 cups all-purpose flour

      Toppings

• 1 bunch spinach, sliced
• 2 boneless chicken breasts, rotisserie roasted & cubed
• 8 roma tomatoes, diced

Step 2: Making the dough
Mix your warm water with the yeast until it has dissolved. Let this sit for 5 minutes until the yeast foams. You can cut up your chicken, tomatoes, and/or spinach while you wait. Mix everything else in the dough ingredients list aside from the flour, and then add this to the yeast. After a little stirring, start to gradually pour the flour in, kneading the dough as you pour. You will end up with a small ball as seen above. Let that sit for half an hour, covered. Finish preparing the topping while you wait.

Step 3: Making the butter sauce
This garlic butter sauce is for the brushing of your crust. Simply mix the ingredients together. You can then spread out the dough on a pizza pan and brush this butter sauce along the edges, making sure to get the sides as well so that the buttery goodness can be tasted along the whole crust.


Step 4: Making the sauce
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahreinheit now. I saved the explanation of the sauce for last because it thickens quite rapidly if you do it too far in advance. Melt your butter in a saucepan on low heat, not quite letting it brown. Before it completely melts, add in your salt, pepper, and flour. Quickly add your milk and stir for a bit before adding in your cheese. Let the sauce simmer a bit and then turn off the heat. It will thicken. Once it has cooled a bit but is still spreadable, put it on your pizza but keep away from the crust where the butter sauce is.

Step 5: Topping your pizza
What we learned from our first go around was that spinach as the very top topping will dry out and burn a bit. Here's how we topped our first pizza - chicken, tomato, and spinach.


After learning from our mistake, we put some of the spinach underneath the sauce for the second pizza and also underneath the tomatoes. Of course, the small inconvenience here was that tomatoes fall off easily but oh well!


Step 6: Baking and completion
We baked our pizzas for approximately 40 minutes, give or take. The crust turned out beautifully on both, and other than the breadiness, the pizzas were successful! Here are the two pizzas: