Daring Bakers October, Pizza

This month's challenge had a sad note to it. One of the Daring Bakers, Sherry, who was also one of the members slated to choose this month's challenge recipe, passed away. In honor of Sherry, Rosa of Rosa's Yummy Yums went with Sherry's original recipe choice for this month's challenge: Pizza Napoletana from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. Rosa threw in a twist though--throughout October, Daring Bakers across the globe would be throwing their dough high in the air as they made their hand tossed pizzas. Not only would we be tossing it, we'd be photographing our efforts as well. Yikes. We were free to choose our toppings, sweet, savory or both, we just needed to make two. I opted for one of each, making a chicken club pizza for the savory, and a gorgonzola, pear and honey pizza for dessert.

My first job in high school was at Shakey's Pizza...ugh the memories. But despite such incredible gourmet experience (LOL), I still couldn't seem to hand toss this dough. Apparently I have square hands because both of my pizzas turned out square.

Chicken Club Pizza is really just CPK's California Club. Easy and I think the homemade version tastes just like the CPK version. The only thing of note is that I don't really like mayo, so my version was pretty light on that--it can easily be increased.

Chicken Club Pizza

1 pizza dough, hand tossed

oil for brushing dough; I used garlic oil

1.5 c mozarella

1 small chicken breast, grilled and diced

4 pieces bacon cooked and crumbled

2 c. shredded lettuce and tossed with 2 tbsp mayo/1 tsp water mixture

1 medium tomato diced

1 avocado sliced

Preheat oven to 500 degrees, with pizza stone in oven.

Place hand tossed dough on semolina topped pizza peel or back of a baking sheet. Brush with garlic oil and top with mozarella.

Slide pizza onto hot pizza stone and bake for 5-8 minutes.

Remove from oven and top pizza with crumbled bacon, the diced chicken, half the tomatoes, the mayo dressed lettuce, the rest of the tomatoes and the avocado slices.

The gorgonzola, pear and honey pizza is a fabulous combination of sweet, salty, cruncy and chewy and is an altered version of a recipe found in Tyler Florence's Eat This Book.

Gorgonzola Pear and Honey Pizza

1 hand tossed pizza crust

1 cup toasted almonds

1/3 c. sugar

1 tbsp water

sprinkle of cinnamon

gorgonzola cheese

1-2 pears

honey

Heat oven to 500 degrees with pizza stone in oven.

Place almonds, sugar, water and cinnamon in small food processor and process to make a paste.

Place hand tossed dough on semolina topped pizza peel or back of a baking sheet.

Top with almond paste, pear slices, drizzle of honey and crumbled blue cheese.

Bake for 7-9 minutes or until cheese melts and crust is golden.