Breakfast Pizza

This was delicious, though there were some missteps.


Ingredients

• Dough
  
  • 2.5c flour
    
  • 4tbsp olive oil
    
  • 1/2tsp salt
    
  • 1tsp sugar
    
  • 2.25tsp yeast
    
• Sauce
  
  • 2.5tbsp butter
    
  • 1.5tbsp flour
    
  • 1c milk
    
  • 1/2c pepper jack, grated
    
  • ~1tsp chopped or powdered (?) rosemary
    
  • ~1tsp basil
    
  • pinch of salt, pepper to taste
    
• Other Ingredients
  
  • 1/2 red onion, sliced
    
  • ~4-8 pieces of bacon, chopped
    
  • arugula
    
  • eggs
    

First, make the dough: mix all the ingredients together and adjust the liquid:flour ratio until you can knead it on the counter (for about 5 minutes) to get a nice, elasticky dough. Grease a bowl, and set the dough to rise in it (covered with plastic wrap) for about 30 minutes. When it's done, turn it out onto the counter again and roll out into a big square to fit on a big baking sheet. Then cover with a towel and set aside.


Preheat the oven to 350. Now, we make the fillings while the dough rises. Start by making the cheese sauce. In a saucepan, melt the butter and cook until it stops foaming. Then add the flour and stir until well incorporated, then add the milk. Turn the heat up and cook it until the sauce thickens, then turn off the heat and add the cheese and herbs. You can probably add the herbs earlier, but I didn't. Anyway, stir the sauce together and set aside.


Now the other fillings. Sautee the onion and bacon together until the bacon is pretty well cooked through. That's actually about it for this step.


Pizza ASSEMBLE. Add the sauce in an even layer, then put the onion and bacon evenly around the pizza. I added some sliced tomatoes to mine. Then you bake it. We started at 350 but increased to 500. It took about 15-20 minutes for the crust to be nice and brown. In the mean time, fry an egg (over easy, if you please). Take the pizza out and sprinkle VERY liberally with arugula. Then put the egg(s) on top of each serving. Serve!


Note: we attempted to crack the egg on TOP of the pizza and hope it would cook properly in the oven. IT DID NOT. Frying an egg = same result, less variability. ALSO I made the mistake of adding arugula BEFORE baking. Claire warned me about this but I didn't believe it. That was wrong of me, and I will be the first person to admit it.


Thoughts: Really good, but hard to prepare in moderation. Delicious, though. I would do this again. It's not really pizza - it's kind of like a croque madame, but with arugula and onion. I liked it. On the other hand our actual EXECUTION left something to be desired. We messed up 1/2 the pizza with my stupid ideas and the other 1/2 looked awesome.


Disaster Index: 7/10 salvaged to like 1/10. Claire insists that her half was always 1/10. WHATEVER CLAIRE.