Pizza Party!!

Sunday we had the family over for a big pizza party celebrating Sam's 9th birthday. I followed an episode on the Today show: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9683196/ . I followed it to a "T" except I used store bought pizza dough. I bought wheat, garlic & herb and regular pizza dough. I used their recipe for the red and white sauce. The toppings I served were pepperoni, sausage, bacon, chicken, red onions, green and red peppers, basil pesto, red pepper pesto, mushrooms, artichokes, black olives, and of course, lots and lots of mozzarella cheese. It was delicious! I also had regular store bought pizza sauce because I didn't feel I had enough of the homemade. I personally felt the store bought was fine and in the future I would just use this instead of making my own. I baked all the pizza dough in advance and spread them out in two long ovals on each cookie sheet (jelly roll pan). This is the way the author of the cookbook, Pam Anderson, suggests. She says it ensures that middles cook through and you can fit more pizzas in the oven at the same time. Brilliant, I say!

Then, when it was time to eat, I let everyone dress a pizza or half a pizza. They LOVED this part. Once the pizzas were dressed, they went back into the oven at a lower temp for about 10 more minutes. Ted and I used the garlic and herb crust and topped it with white sauce, chicken, and mushrooms (onions or peppers could have been good too). This one was really good! My dad was very grateful that I had wheat crust available and had a whole one to himself, topped with lots of veggies and no meat. The pesto really helped to give the pizza some zing. The kids really enjoyed dressing their own pizza too! Many of us have to sacrifice what we really love in order to share pizza with others or because you are ordering it where every topping costs extra. The sky was the limit here!

I also had Pam Anderson's (no...not the busty blonde) caesar salad with homemade croutons. The croutons were scrumptious, but I probably would have been happier with store bought dressing instead of what her recipe called for. But NOTHING, beats homemade croutons.

I had about 10 adults and 11 kids and we went through about 5 pizza dough balls or 10 pizzas (because I split each ball of dough into two pizzas). My mistake was that I had quite a few pizza crusts left over. But I gave half of them away and froze the rest for future meals.

I recommend this meal for a birthday party because it pleases everyone and I didn't have to bake something different for the kids.