Day 67- Baked Potato Pizza

After I made a calzone at home last month a good family friend (and cooking extraordinaire) told me I should try baked potato pizza, so tonight I did.

I am still working on that large sack of potato's' from the Patata's Bravas and we have used them for mashed potatoes a couple of times since then. On the last batch of mashed potatoes (last night while grilling out with our friends the Lief's) I was sure to make some extra for the pizza for tonight.

Quinn stopped off at our favorite local pizza shop for some dough and I took care of the rest

Ingredients:
Your favorite pizza dough
Left over mashed potatoes (about 2 cups)
4 cloves of garlic
5 strips of bacon (I just baked the entire package)
Sour cream (about 3/4 cup)
Cheddar cheese, shredded (about 1.5 cups)
Olive oil
Corn meal

A great block of cheddar cheese

I got out my food processor to shred the cheese (and shredded a couple other blocks for my gourmet mac & cheese for later this week)

Before I started shredding the cheese I started to bake the bacon (Once in a while it's OK to have some bacon, I even used low sodium :). If you have never made bacon this way - you should. Preheat the oven to 400F (I also left my pizza stone in the oven, so the heat to cook the bacon could preheated that as well). Then I take a baking sheet and place a baking cooling rack on top (obviously this needs to be a metal one) turn the heat on the oven to 400F and lay out the bacon on the cooling rack and once preheated bake for 15-20 minutes (after 15 minutes check on it every 2 minutes until it looks good). I get perfectly crisp bacon every time ;)

Once the bacon is ready set that aside to cool a bit and roll out your dough. I always rub a little olive oil on my dough. Once it's rolled out well I let it rest to maintain the shape, poke it with a fork and then gently lift it and sprinkle some corn meal on the back so it will easily slide onto my pizza stone.

I wanted to add some garlic, so I put a little olive oil, about 2 table spoons, in an oven safe dish and 4 cloves of chopped garlic and put that in the oven to roast it a bit and flavor the oil - about 10 minutes.

Then I spread the left over mashed potatoes onto the dough and poured the oil and garlic on top

Next I spread spread sour cream on top of the potatoes and topped it with bacon

Then I sprinkled the top with a generous amount of cheese and slid it onto the pizza stone.
I cooked the pizza at 415F for about 30 minutes and took it out to cool for about 5 minutes before serving

This pizza was delicious! Thanks Ellen for sharing your baked potato pizza idea with me!