Barbeque Chicken Pizza

An oldie bit a goodie!
I first had this in the early 90s at a restaurant in Minneapolis, Sidneys. The flavors were so good that I had to try making this at home. I started by using the recipe in James McNair's book and have adapted it over the years into the recipe I'll outline below.

Paul is a condiment collector. Actually, he's more of a collector as compared to my minimalist leanings with things other than condiments...but we're just talking condiments right now! He likes to have a variety of barbeque sauces in the refrigerator as opposed to my one bottle of sauce. It drives me a bit crazy, so I made this to use up some of what we had as far as the sauces. I'm trying to get rid of a couple of the bottles for now and am counting on this recipe to help me. And, can I just say? That Devil's Spit sauce was spicy!

I cooked 2 chicken breasts in a generous cup of barbeque sauce until they had just turned from pink inside (they will cook even more on the top of the pizza). I cooled these and chopped them into bite size pieces and put just a bit more sauce on them before refrigerating them for later pizza assembly.

I make my own crust using the recipe mentioned in the book above; however, I can work it into our schedule on Tuesdays since I can make the crust and let it rise when we leave for a violin lesson. Another idea is to make the thin crust mentioned in the arugula pizza post since that doesn't require rise time. When we get home I can roll out the dough and top with shredded smoked cheese and some barbeque sauce (using up those condiments) and some rings of red onion.

Bake the pizza and top with cilantro, if you have some. It's perfectly fine without and I wouldn't recommend purchasing it just for this, but, if you happen to have some, use it. As you can see from the picture, I didn't use it this time. Any kind of smoked cheese will work in this recipe; I used smoked swiss cheese here and it was good. The smallest package of smoked cheese I could find was Swiss, so that's why I used it when making this recipe recently even though I typically use smoked gouda. I just didn't want extra cheese in the refrigerator. Remember, I'm trying to empty it rather than stock it right now. James Mc Nair's recipe calls for fontina and smoked gouda in larger quantities than we need as far as fat content. I think his recipe calls for 1 1/2 c of each kind of cheese which is much cheesier than I typically make pizza. That's part of why I make it at home....to cut down on the fat. I probably have made the pizza according to the exact specifications in the recipe at at some point but have cut down on the cheese to make this a bit less decadent....still delicious though. And speaking of cheese on pizza, I think it was from this book that I learned the good idea to put the cheese on the pizza before the sauce so the oil from the cheese prevents sauce from being absorbed into the crust.

I was a REALLY nice mom that night and made a pizza without sauce for Eleanor. Her pizza was drizzled with olive oil, and topped with Parmesan and sliced fresh mozzarella.

Now, I'll just have to keep him away from the grocery store so he doesn't re-stock the pantry/refrigerator with more sauces. Whew...one bottle for the recyling bin and some open space in the fridge. Now, if I can just figure out how to use the pickles........

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