Using La Cloche Bottom for Pizza

I've been playing around with the La Cloche whenever I can and I know one of the things you can do with it is make pizza. If I look at their instructions, they put the pizza into the deep dish itself but if I want to make multiple, I don't know how to get a cooked pizza out and a new one in!

I don't have anything that can dig into the dish itself to get the pizza out so I had to figure out another way to use it.
My husband suggested using it upside down and I was very skeptical because it's bumpy and there's words. I really thought the dough would just stick to the bottom. But we tried it out and it worked great. No sticky at all!

Same pizza beer dough that I normally use, I'll eventually write up a post on it. ;)

When I put on the first pizza, the La Cloche was cold and out of the oven.
The oven was preheated and I put it in at 350 degrees. The dish didn't crack.
Once it was done I just used a normal plate and I lifted the pizza right off.

Getting the second one on was a little tricky since the stone was not hot.
I don't have a bread paddle so it was tricky.
We took the stone out of the oven and quickly put the rolled out dough on the stone.
Then the 2 of us put on all the toppings in less then 3 mins cause we didn't want the stone to get cold.
Then we popped it back in the oven. :)

Next time I'm going to try with my cookie sheet and lots of cornmeal to see if I can slide the pizza off of the sheet onto the plate right away.

Pesto Chicken Beer Crust Pizza

At my parent's house we cook Chinese food every weekday. Since we have all the Chinese seasoning on hand, cooking Chinese food is the easy way out. On weekends my brother and I like to mix things up sometimes if we're not feeling lazy. Pizza surprisingly can be quite labour intensive depending on what type of ingredients you use.

If you use things like pepperoni, already cooked meats, pre-sliced veggie and shredded cheese, then it's super easy.

For this Pizza, I used homemade beer crust dough and Pesto sauce.

I'll eventually write separate posts for those items.

Pesto Chicken Beer Crust Pizza

Makes 1-12 inch pizza, Prep Time: 30 mins Cook Time: 20 - 40 mins

Ingredients

• 300-500g Pizza Dough (Depends on crust thickness and size of pan)
• 1 Chicken thigh meat (sliced and cooked)
• half an onion sliced
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 Tbsp Pesto Sauce (a little more doesn't hurt)
• 200g Mozzarella

Directions

1. If you're making your own pizza dough, make it and let it sit for 30 mins while you prep the rest of your ingredients.
2. While the dough is sitting, slice up the onions and dice up the garlic. Cook in a little bit of oil in a pan on medium heat to slowly caramelize the onion. Doesn't have to be fully caramelize when you use it for this pizza.
3. Cut the chicken meat into small bite size piece. Add to the pan and cook the meat
4. Let your toppings cool
5. Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit (or to the max heat your pan allows, I like 400 as it makes my crust nice and crunchy)
6. Grate your mozzarella
7. Roll our your pizza to your prefer thickness. The one in the picture above was cracker like because I like my super thin crust pizza.
8. Spread the pesto on the dough. Since this is pesto, cover even the the edges, your crust will taste awesome.
9. Spread a thin layer of cheese
10. Add the chicken, onion and garlic topping.
11. Add the rest of the cheese
12. Bake until the crust is brown and the cheese is all melted. Depending on thickness of your dough, can take anywhere from 20 mins to 45 hour. So keep an eye on it.

Not too complicated. :)