Roast turkey and proscuitto pizza, and other forays into DIY frozen pizza

Early on in the pandemic I did a deep dive into frozen pizza. Not the kind from the freezer aisle, mind you, but the DIY kind.

I went down that rabbit hole partly because I'm aware that my sour dough always makes the most ebullient crust when it's never been refrigerated or frozen after its feeding. So I thought, why not make the crust and parbake it for my own, presumably better than Boboli base? I had made frozen pizza as a kid, but hadn't revisited it as an adult.

After lots of testing, I decided a very lightly topped pizza -- think thin red sauce with minimal cheese -- worked fine enough. If I added additional ingredients at the point I was ready to bake it, that was fine, but putting them on before freezing didn't yield the most satisfactory results: Better than store bought, but still a less perfect crust. 

Mostly I decided it was worth experimenting with frozen pizza, but it wasn't ever going to be as good as a newly raised and formed crust, so I just set myself a reminder to thaw a ball of dough overnight in time for Friday night pizza.

This was probably the most satisfactory frozen effort, a minimalist Margherita.

It wasn't a wasted effort, however, because I also went nuts trying out various pizza sauces to put on those frozen pizza attempts. While frozen crusts aren't all that useful, frozen small containers of sauce are a wonderful thing to have on hand. All the sauces I tried made perfectly fine pizza sauces. Surprisingly, the no-cook sauce using canned tomatoes from the Kitchn.com was a definitely viable repeater, and not just because it's super fast to make. I mostly fall into the cooked sauce camp, but that fast-fix version works just fine and makes plenty to freeze ahead in small containers.

My favorite cooked pizza sauce is probably still the one from "Little Pizza Guides" that I blogged about in this recipe for Roasted Garlic Bacon Pizza. (There's no meat in the sauce itself; it's just a versatile slow-simmered sauce that's handy to make ahead and store in one-pizza size servings.)

Another cheater's pizza sauce version that I've made as a bail-out sauce for years is a riff on Martha Stewart's Spaghetti 101 sauce: Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add 3 large garlic cloves thinly sliced and ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes and cook just until garlic is fragrant. Add 1 (14.5-ounce) can chopped tomatoes and increase heat to high and cook until liquid has mostly evaporated and it's tightened into a sauce. Season to taste with coarse salt.

Pizza: Just another reason to be happy it's Friday.

Roast turkey and prosciutto pizza
Adapted from Cooking Light. This was among the recipes we made on a crust that I parbaked and then wrapped in plastic wrap and tin foil, and then froze until we needed it.

Ingredients
1 par-baked pizza crust or purchased prebaked crust like a Boboli
¾ cup pasta sauce
½ cup shredded fontina cheese
1 cup (or less) shredded cooked turkey or chicken
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
½ cup thinly sliced red onion
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
3 thin slices of prosciutto, shredded into thin strips
A handful of arugula leaves

Method
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place crust on a baking sheet or stone. Spread pasta sauce over crust. Sprinkle with fontina cheese. Toss chicken with balsamic vinegar and spread over pizza. Top with red onion and Parmesan cheese. Bake for 12 minutes or until browned.

Remove from oven and top with prosciutto and arugula.

Rating: When I tried this recipe I commented that I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. To which my husband understandably asked why I had made it then. Not sure if I can explain properly the idea that sometimes a recipe strikes you as something so odd it might just work. Tossing the chicken with balsamic vinegar perks it up quite a bit. I used the full cup of chicken as directed, but if I make it again, I'll probably dial it back a bit for a better balance of flavors. But we enjoyed it.

Basic frozen pizza Step 1: Bake untopped crust at 400 degrees until just set but not browned,
about 8 to 10 minutes.Spread a thin layer of sauce over the cooled, par-baked dough.

Step 2. Top with additional toppings of choice.
Place in freezer on a parchment lined baking sheet until frozen.

Step. 3. Wrap frozen pizza well in plastic wrap, then tin foil and store in freezer.

Step 4. Bake frozen pizza at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes until golden brown.
Better than store-bought, at any rate.