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Cooking pizza in a skillet

Skillet cooking becomes even easier if you start with ready made ingredients, such as the components for this chicken alfredo pizza.

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The Pastry Chef's Baking
A skillet creates a perfect 'pizza stone' for an individual-sized pizza, such as this chicken alfredo pizza.

I am obsessed with trying out recipes in my new skillet. For this one, I didn’t really have a set recipe but an idea of “hey, I wonder how pizza would turn out in this thing.”

A cast iron skillet is great for baking anything bread-like. The heat and darkness of the skillet, so anathema when making cakes and cookies (the edges cook faster and get darker before the middle is usually done) is perfect for pizza dough. It crisps the outer edges and forms a nice crust. Because I used a smaller skillet (6”), the outer ring of the pizza didn’t have time to burn before the middle was baked. But did have enough time to crisp to a still-chewy exterior and turn a beautiful golden brown.

This pizza requires no cooking skill to make, which is fortunate. I bought the whole wheat, ready-made pizza dough from Trader Joe’s, used cooked chicken (also from TJ’s) as the topping and made up an alfredo sauce (recipe, such as it is, below) which I poured over the chicken. Bake at 400 degrees F. until golden brown and cheese has melted and voila – Skillet Chicken Alfredo Pizza.

I only wanted a little sauce and the only reason I made it alfredo was I didn’t have any tomato sauce for a tomato-based pizza sauce. This turned out pretty well although I admit, I think I could’ve stretched out the pizza dough to a thinner crust. I like thick crust pizza though so I wasn’t too upset with my impromptu “cooking”.

Alfredo Sauce
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup half and half
1/4 cup whole milk
1 tablespoon chopped fresh garlic (I used Penzey’s minced garlic and it was perfect)
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Melt butter and whisk in half and half and milk. Add garlic and stir in mozzarella cheese. Whisk over medium-low heat until completely melted. If mixture is too thin, add more cheese, a tablespoon at a time. Sauce will thicken after being baked and once it sets.

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