My wife and I love pizza, but we don’t like a pizza swimming in grease, so here’s our solution for baking and enjoying pizza while avoiding the extra grease.  Our favorite pizza is Pizza Hawaii, because lean ham and Canadian Bacon aren’t greasy when cooked like pepperoni, hamburger and sausage are – and pineapple has always been a favorite ingredient of ours.  An easy substitute for ham on this pizza would be chicken, or leave the meat off and enjoy a vegetarian pizza instead.

Helpful hint: Have all your ingredients prepared ahead of time, which really helps when assembling the pizza.

Note: The pizza dough recipe calls for an option of making a double-batch of dough if desired, so you can use all the dough for one pizza, or divide the pizza dough into two batches, using one portion to make your pizza and freezing the other half for later. You can see in the photos below, that the first pizza is made with a double-batch of dough, while the second is from only a single-batch of dough. The double-batch pizza crust is thicker in the middle and at the edges, and the edges of the single-batch crust are much smaller.  If you freeze a portion of dough, let it thaw overnight in the refrigerator, and then let stand for two hours at room temperature before preparing the pizza. The pizza crust will rise even after being frozen.

As is often the case in our kitchen, my role in making Pizza Hawaii is cleaning up, dish washing, taste appreciation and now blogging! 🙂 The pizza dough my wife makes is found on the back of the Fleischmann’s Pizza Crust Yeast packets that you can purchase in most any grocery store.  Her variations are to use half all-purpose flour and half wheat flour, or any combination you might have on hand, as well as sprinkling in some Kraft Parmesan Cheese and dried oregano while mixing the dough.

After the pizza dough has been mixed and spread out on the pizza pan, my wife pre-bakes the crust for five minutes or so to ensure the crust is baked through and not soggy in the middle.  You can probably skip this step if you’re using a pre-heated pizza stone.  Once the pre-baked pizza crust is back out of the oven and cooled, she then spreads a good amount of Ragú Chunky Tomato, Garlic and Onion spaghetti sauce onto the crust (any favorite marinara or spaghetti sauce will do, homemade or purchased).  We found if you use too little sauce, the pizza tends to be dry.

On top of the sauce she layers half a bag of shredded mozzarella cheese along with a good sprinkling of Parmesan cheese, generous amounts of diced or sliced ham, well-drained chunk pineapple (use a paper towel to soak up excess moisture after draining), sauteed shallots, sliced fresh button mushrooms, along with chopped green and red bell peppers for both flavor and color.  Feel free to add any vegetable of your choice.  Once the veggies are in place, she tops the pizza with the rest of the shredded mozzarella, some more Parmesan, and dried oregano, before baking the pizza in a pre-heated, 425 degree F oven on the middle rack until the crust turns golden brown and the cheese bubbles, approximately 12-15 minutes depending on your oven.

Leftover refrigerated pizza covered in aluminum foil is easily warmed up the next day in the oven at about 300 degrees F, as reheating in a microwave tends to make the crust too soft for our liking.   Enjoy!