blissful eats with Tina Jeffers: breakfast pizza

 

Hello again, it’s so good be back!  Who doesn’t love bacon, am I right?  Around my house you can’t have too much bacon.  And bacon for dinner?  Even better.  One of our new favorite ways to enjoy all this porky goodness is on pizza, not just any old pizza, but pizza with bacon and eggs.  Yes, that’s right, breakfast on a pizza. 

I am all about making my own pizza dough, there is absolutely no reason to buy store bought dough unless you are in a big time crunch.  Sometimes the urge to make pizza hits me at the last minute and I can have the dough ready for toppings in an hour, but if you can plan ahead and make the dough the night before it will be even better.  An overnight rise really helps the flavors develop.  The extra long rise helps the dough’s structure and enables the starches to transform into sugars resulting in a beautiful golden flavorful crust. 

My other tip about making pizza at home is this; if you don’t have a pizza stone, don’t bother.  I spent years sobbing about the fact that my homemade pizzas were limp, pale and soggy.  A stone is the best way to duplicate the super hot temperatures needed to get that beautiful blistery crust that you’re looking for.  It was the magic ingredient I thought I was missing, so simple and yet I wasted so much time and ate a lot of mediocre pizzas before I invested in one.

So the next time you want breakfast for dinner try this pizza you may just find yourself eating it for breakfast and lunch too.

Breakfast Pizza

Makes two large pizzas

Ingredients:

For the dough

  • 1 package (2 ¼ teaspoons) active dry yeast
  • 1 cup warm water
  • 1 cup ice-cold water
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • 1 tablespoon kosher salt
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • about 5 ¼ to 5 ½ cups bread flour

Toppings

  • 1 onion thinly sliced
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil (or even better, bacon fat)
  • 6 slices bacon cooked and crumbled (or even more if you love bacon as much as I do)
  • 1 cup shredded cheese, your choice (fontina, cheddar, mozzarella would all be a good choice)
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 cup arugula
  • 1 tablespoon good quality olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon sherry vinegar

 

Method:

For the dough

In a small bowl, stir yeast into warm water, add the honey and let sit for 5 minutes until yeast starts to bubble and foam.

In another bowl, mix cold water and salt until dissolved; stir in oil.

In a heavy-duty standing mixer with a dough hook, place 5 1/4 cups flour in a large bowl. Stir the yeast mixture again to blend, then add to flour along with cold-water mixture. Beat with the dough hook on low speed until mixture is smooth and not sticky, 10-12 minutes. If dough remains sticky, add 2 more tablespoons flour and beat 2 minutes longer; if still sticky, add another 1 to 2 tablespoons flour and beat until nonsticky and smooth.

Scrape dough onto a lightly floured board; cut in half. With floured hands, pick up one portion of dough; pull opposite edges together toward center and pinch to seal. Repeat all around circumference to form a smooth, tight ball. Place each portion in a 1-gallon plastic bag. Squeeze out air and seal bag, allowing enough room for ball to double. Chill at least 10 hours or up to 3 days.

1 -2 hours before you want make the pizza, remove the dough from the fridge and let come to room temperature. (I usually take mine out in the morning and just leave it to rise on the counter until I’m ready to use it.

To assemble the pizza:

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees or as hot as you can get it for at least 15 minutes with your pizza stone in the bottom of the oven.

Fry the bacon over medium heat until crisp. Drain on a paper towel and then roughly chop. Place one tablespoon oil (or reserved bacon fat) in a skillet over medium heat and add onions. Cook until soft, golden and carmelized about 15-20 minutes. Set aside.

Roll out dough on lightly floured surface until you reach your desired thickness. I like to roll out and cook my pizza on parchment paper, it’s way easier to transfer to a pizza peel, no clean up either! Try not to incorporate too much extra flour, just enough to allow you to roll it out. You should end up with a 12 inch circle.

Spread ¾ of the cheese in a thin layer over top of pizza, then evenly distribute onions and bacon all over the top. Make a small well in the top of the cheese and crack 2 eggs over the pizza spacing them out on the top of the pizza. Top with remaining cheese.

Bake the pizza for 8 minutes until the crust is golden and the eggs are cooked to your liking.

Toss the arugula with the oil and vinegar in a small bowl and season with salt and pepper. Top the pizza with the salad

Prepare the other pizza the same way and enjoy!

 

Notes: You could divide the dough into four equal portions and make individual mini pizzas with an egg on each. Feel free to experiment with the toppings, some asparagus would be a lovely addition or instead of the salad you could top the pizzas with green onions and fresh herbs. We also made a version of this with homemade tomato jam instead of the onions and it was delicious!

 

*don't forget to visit tina at scalingbackblog.com

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