Homegrown.... PIZZA

This month's Homegrown Gourmet challenge features... PIZZA!

Elizabeth at Elizabeth's Cooking Experiments is the host, and I think chose a great challenge! I ended up making two different kinds (since most pizza dough recipes make a ton anyhow... and I had great ideas for a pizza for my home, and one for DHs hometown too!)

First, the pizza for CT: this is basically a local pizza. We have a fabulous farm nearby, Rosedale Farm, with the best corn... anywhere! This is where we get all our produce from in the summer, and fall, thanks largely to a weekly farm membership. All the toppings for this pizza were included in that weeks bag even! This pizza featured roasted garlic mashed with olive oil and smeared as the 'sauce,' local heirloom tomatos, sliced, fresh basil chiffonade, super sweet yellow corn sliced off the cob, and two medium balls of local fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced. It was SO good! Even better the next day, reheated. Only thing I would do differently is use way more garlic - the flavor did not come through as much as I would have liked.

Pizza dough recipe from Cooks Illustrated, online. I made the crust as thin as I could without breaking!

Pizza numero two is representative of DHs hometown of Johnstown PA. In western PA, pierogies are crazy popular. They are sold at almost every booth at the local city fair every year... where I had never really heard of them before! They exist up north... but generally our filled pasta of choice is ravioli :)

Normally, pierogies are potato filled pasta, that are cooked through and served with carmelized onions. They are very yummy and very unhealthy! There are a ton of variations, so I chose our favorite to base this pizza on - the cheddar bacon pierogi. MMmmmm...

The crust of the pizza would be the pasta. I topped it with lots of carmelized onions, and then mashed potatos (I used small new potatos, boiled until cooked through, and roughly mashed with some butter and milk added to taste) that I mixed with about a cup of cabot shredded sharp cheddar (the best bagged pre-shredded cheddar in my area IMO) and a package of that precooked bacon... roughly shredded. When the pizza was almost done, I added even more cheddar on top of it.

WOW. This pizza was REALLY good! I really did feel like the flavor captured the essence of pierogies, too.

I dont really ever make homemade pizza, but I may be a convert... this stuff was good, and easier than expected! Thanks for the challenge Elizabeth :)