What’s Cookin’ – Garlic Shrimp Pizza

About twice a month, we make pizza at home.  We usually make 2 pizzas since there are usually a few teenagers around, but one of them is always a Garlic Shrimp Pizza as that is their favorite!

This isn’t a true pizza because it does not have the classic tomato sauce base, but it is a good one.  Especially if you love garlic and shrimp.

A word about dough – I usually make my own pizza dough as noted in the recipe below.  Pizza dough tastes better if it is made a few days in advance and allowed to sit in the refrigerator.  You could even make it the weekend prior and use it during the week.  And if you are feeding only one or two people, you could use half one night and half another night.  We use pizza dough to make pizzas, cheesy bread sticks, and cinnamon sticks just like the pizza stores offer.  These are just so much better homemade.

Two of my kids work in a pizza parlor that uses fresh dough, and the owners have taken to giving me some of their dough to make my own pizzas at home.  It is marvelous.  One of my friends, Laura, gets fresh pizza dough from Sam’s and says it is good, too.

So don’t be scared off from making fresh pizza at home because you are afraid of the dough.  There are options.

Baking the pizza at home – I included basic at home baking instructions using a metal pan, and that works well.  I have a pizza stone and have evolved a way of baking pizzas that more closely resembles a pizza oven product.  If you roll out your dough onto a piece of parchment paper, then put that on top of an inverted sheet pan, layer on your toppings, and very carefully pull it onto your pre-heated stone, it will bake very nicely.  You will be able to pull the edges of the parchment paper to take it off the stone, too.

A word about cheese – I use freshly grated cheese.  It just melts better.  The recipe calls for Mozzarella and Parmesan, but we live in the St. Louis area and have access to a product that is popular here called Provel cheese.  This is a white processed cheese that is a mixture of Cheddar, Swiss, and provolone.  My kids love it, and we use this, too.

Here is the dough, rolled on a piece of parchment paper with the garlic butter sauce spread all over it.

Here is the shrimp layered over the sauce.  I actually used my homemade Cayenne pepper flakes on this pizza, but my original recipe calls for Cayenne pepper.  Cayenne pepper is the secret ingredient – just be careful not to add too much!

A word about the shrimp – I usually use those small bags of precooked, salad shrimp, but have also used the larger precooked shrimp, and it is good, too.

We usually add way too much cheese and it bubbles off the edge and all over the bottom of the oven, but it is soooo good.

The baked Garlic Shrimp Pizza – smells and tastes amazing.  The leftovers are good, too.

Yummy!