Crafts, Cooking, Farmers Market Addictions: Stuffed crust pizza

baked pizza out of oven

For August post I'm sharing a stuffed crust pizza recipe. This was my 1st attempt and it turned out perfect and tasted wonderful. I've made pizzas before but never quite got the crust done, by using my cast iron skillet and heating it first on the stove burner then putting it in the oven, the crust came out crispy and perfect. I saw the recipe on The Kitchen on Food Network so tried it myself. I won't make pizza any other way again. I basically followed the technique but didn't put on a sauce and did my own toppings. That's the beauty of pizza, you can put on whatever you like to eat. I didn't make my own dough either but used the Pillsbury canned crust and instead of using smoked mozzarella for the crust, used mozzarella string cheese. For toppings I used roasted veggies, chunks of mozzarella then topped with chopped fresh spinach after baking. I've also made with caramelized onions and smoked German sausage which was fantastic.
Super easy and tasty. Here's the recipe:

slice of yummy pizza

fresh spinach added

Stuffed crust pizza

1 pizza dough crust, homemade or canned

1 pkg mozzarella string cheese

1 mozzarella cheese ball or shredded mozzarella

olive oil

seasoned salt and pepper

toppings

sauce

cut string cheese

Light sauce recipe, 2 T olive oil, 1 t each chili flakes, basil, salt and pepper, 2 T tomato puree or paste

1 clove minced garlic, mix together and coat lightly on prepared crust. (This is from The Kitchen's website, I didn't use a sauce on mine).

Toppings, The Kitchen recipe used pieces of smoked mozzarella, kalamate olives, thinly sliced red onion and topped with fresh basil after baking.

My toppings were roasted veggies, sweet peppers, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, zucchini and carrots. (I make roasted veggies all the time, at least every other week, with my farmers market purchases. I just cut them up, place on baking pans, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle seasoned salt, steak seasoning and pepper and bake at 350 to 375 for 45 minutes until tender. Each time is a bit different depending on what kind of vegetables I got at the time. I use them for pizza, add to pasta with a simple sauce, add to rice or couscous or my daughter and I just eat them by themselves for lunch.) I also added mozzarella cheese, and chopped fresh spinach after baking.

Preheat oven at 500, coat bottom of cast iron skillet with olive oil and add pizza dough, cut string cheese into 2 inch pieces and fold into crust edges and tuck into skillet, when complete add sauce if desired or just drizzle with olive oil, can also sprinkle with seasoned salt. Add toppings and cheese. Brush crust with olive oil and sprinkle with seasoned salt. Put skillet on stove burner on medium heat and cook until bottom of crust begins to brown lightly, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer to oven and bake until crust is golden and center is bubbly, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and add fresh basil or chopped fresh spinach and drizzle with olive oil. Allow to cool for 10 minutes then slice and serve.