Bacon Cheeseburger Pizza

My friend Jessie blogged the other week about Cheeseburger Pizza and I feel as though I have been living a sheltered life, having never heard of such a thing.  I'm not going to say we're pizza snobs, but most often in this house, if we're having pizza, it's going to be Barbecue Chicken Pizza or, if I'm feeling a bit foreign, I'll make Thai Chicken Pizza.  We don't really venture too far from those two options.

But Cheeseburger Pizza opens up a whole new dimension... especially if you add bacon to it.  Since it's been awhile since we had pizza for dinner (it's not the most diet-friendly option for dinner - I don't get a lot of bang for my buck, if you will, by eating pizza.) I decided to balance my other two meals for that day so I wasn't having a binge-fest on pizza in the evening.  As a side note: I have gotten pretty good at figuring out how to balance my meals these days so that I can avoid almost all semblance of snacking between meals and I feel liberated!  But I still like to eat pizza every now and again!  Anyway, since Jessie's didn't turn out exactly as she thought it should, she did list some ideas as to what she'd do differently next time.  Even more of a reason to give it a try...because a.) I like a challenge, and b.) this year we are attempting to try more new things for dinner, and well, okay, c.) I love pizza.  My original plan was to make two different kinds of cheeseburger pizza, one with a traditional pizza sauce and one with a combined ketchup and mustard sauce.  Unfortunately, the day I had it planned for dinner was also the day Abby came home from school sick.  It seemed a little excessive to make two pizzas for Uriah and me just because I wanted to compare two recipes.  Old Heather would have said: "The hell with it!  I want to see how this works out!  I'm making two pizzas anyway!"  New Heather says: "Two pizzas is excessive.  Two pizzas is twice the amount of food sitting around even if it will get eaten for lunch.  Two pizzas for two people is a stupid idea.  Get your head out of your ass and make food to eat sensibly."

I like New Heather, but she's a bossy bit of goods.

So I just made one.  And it was awesome.   This will definitely be added to the short list of pizzas we make in this house.  Uriah liked it.  I liked it.  And the leftovers reheated well (even though I don't usually like pizza the next day - this one was good!).  You can use whatever pizza dough recipe you want.  Or you can use store bought pizza dough.  The only pizza dough recipe I use is the Pioneer Woman's.  I have her cookbook (and it is literally falling apart at the seams.  The sign of a well-loved cookbook, I'd say.) which makes for easy access to this pizza dough recipe any time I want it, but you can find it on her website here.  Just ignore all the other pizza making parts of the post and focus on the pizza dough.  Unless of course, you want to make that pizza instead, then by all means, be my guest.  I just like her dough recipe and I've been using it for a long time.

The key to Cheeseburger Pizza, I believe, is in the addition of American Cheese.  And, in retrospect, I'm not so sure I'd even try the ketchup/mustard combo; I think I'll just stick with plain old pizza sauce going forward.  I also used spicy pickle relish, but I suppose if I were to feed this to younger kids, I'd just use regular dill pickle relish.  I used Italian sausage, but I might also try it with ground turkey next time, seasoned with Montreal Steak Seasoning (which is what we use to season our hamburgers with).

So, I guess it's probably still a work in progress, but I'm glad Jessie got the wheels turning and gave me something new to try in the world of pizza.  That's what friends are for...thanks, Jessie!  My family thanks you, too!

Serves8

• Your favorite Pizza Dough
• ½ cup pizza sauce
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano, divided
• 2 teaspoons dried basil, divided
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme, divided
• 4 slices American cheese
• ½ pound Italian sausage, browned and crumbled
• 3-4 tablespoons pickle relish
• ¼ of a red onion, sliced thinly into rings, then cut in half
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 4 slices of bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Spread pizza dough on a pizza pan.  Spread pizza sauce (more or less to your liking) over crust, almost to the edges.  Sprinkle 1 teaspoon each of the dried oregano, basil and thyme over the sauce.  Add 4 slices of American cheese on top of the pizza sauce.  Spread Italian sausage evenly over the American cheese and then spread pickle relish (again more or less to your liking) over the sausage.  Spread red onion next and then the mozzarella cheese, leaving aside about 2-3 tablespoons of cheese.  Spread the bacon on top of the mozzarella cheese and then add the remaining mozzarella cheese evenly on top.  Sprinkle the entire top of the cheese with the remaining oregano, basil and thyme.  Bake in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes or until cheese is bubbly and crust is brown.