Friday Night Dinner

We either eat out on Friday evenings or eat a simple to prepare meal at home. Since we ate out twice last weekend, I opted for eating in tonight. I also decided to make something we had not had in a while. So I dug out an old recipe that I had gotten from my mother. I did end up making a few changes to the recipe. I made only one-half pound of ground beef, which was more than enough for the pizza. Of course, the fact that I used a higher quality ground beef today might have had something to do with the final result. I also refuse to use canned mushrooms, so I simply omitted them from this pizza.

Crazy Crust Pizza

My mother got this recipe off a package of flour when I was a little girl. This was the first and only pizza I would eat then. I do believe that half the fun was watching the batter bake and puff up in the oven.

Batter:
1 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. oregano
2 eggs
2/3 c. milk

Toppings:
1/2 lb. ground beef or sausage
1/4 c. chopped onion
1 c. pizza sauce
1 c. (4 oz.) shredded Mozzarella cheese
1 can (4 oz.) well-drained mushrooms, optional
Pepperoni, if desired

Oven at 425 degrees or less preferably at 375.

Brown meat, seasoning to taste. Drain, set aside. Lightly grease and flour a 14” or 12” pizza pan or a 10” X 15” jelly roll pan.

Prepare batter: Don’t sift flour. In small bowl, combine all ingredients; mixing till smooth. Pour batter into pan, tilting so batter covers bottom. Arrange topping of meat, onion, and mushrooms over batter. Bake on low rack of oven for 25 - 30 min. Deep brown gives a crisp crust.

The ingredients for the crust.

The batter is poured into the pan and the onion and cooked and drained ground beef has been added.

The cooked crust comes out of the oven. My family was disappointed that the crust did not live up to its name and puff up in odd ways this time.

Remove from oven; drizzle with pizza sauce, cheese and pepperoni. Return to oven for 10 min.

Today I am adding tomato sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese and pepperoni.

The pizza is ready to go back into the oven. The nice thing about this is that the crust can be made and baked ahead of time and then finished off later. As my husband works later on Friday evenings, this is a handy thing.

The pizza is finished and ready for slicing. My husband was very happy I made pizza for him this weekend.

Tomato sauce: 8 oz. can tomato sauce, 1 to 2 tsp. oregano, and 1/4 tsp. pepper.

Makes one pizza.