Christmas pizza is one of my favorite party foods especially during the holidays. This recipe is easy to make, adding some spice, color and flavor to your holiday table as an appetizer.
This recipe calls for bread dough that’s rolled out into a thin rectangle shape, or you can form the dough into a circle. With all of the hustle and bustle of the season, here’s one of my shortcuts if you don’t have time to make the dough.
You can purchase prepackaged bread dough from the grocery store or you can purchase some pizza dough from your local deli. If you select the bread dough from your grocery store, you will need to thaw first, following the instructions on the package. If you select the dough from the deli, you have pizza dough ready for baking.
Pizza History
According to the history of popular foods in the United States, around the early 1960’s pizza became trendy in urban areas. It was baked in wood fired ovens, with such intense heat that it would bake in just a couple of minutes. Today we use pizza ovens; your conventional oven will produce this dish with ease.
Christmas Pizza
This pizza starts out with your dough rolled out and ready to be topped with an easy tomato sauce. Your choice of topping but with the holiday season I suggest that you pick the Christmas colors of red, green and white for this appetizer. The red being the sauce, the green is basil and the cheese covers the white.
In most recipes the flavors come from the added spices, seasonings or fat that’s cooked in some phase of the preparation. In this dish the fat flavor comes from either bacon or pork fat that you choose to use for this recipe. Cook the bacon or pork so that you have a nice brown crisp to it and set it aside.
Keep the fat renderings in the pan and caramelize thinly sliced onions to a golden brown and add a touch of white pepper. You won’t need salt since the bacon or pork fats are already salted. Set the cooked onions aside and get ready to assemble the dish.
Preparation
Preheat your oven to 450. Oil a baking sheet that is larger than the rolled out dough. Roll your dough out into a rectangle shape and place the dough on the baking sheet. Next spoon your sauce on top of the dough, cover the sauce with cheese evenly over the dough. Leave a border for the crust.
Finish the Christmas pizza by topping it off with the caramelized onions, more cheese and the crumbled bacon. Bake the pizza in the 450 oven for about 20 minutes. When it’s done, remove the tray from your oven. Garnish with some chopped basil and cut into long slices or squares using a pizza cutting wheel.
Ingredients:
Dough
- 1 pack yeast
- 1 cup warm water
- 2 tbsp. oil
- 1 tsp. sugar
- 1 tsp. salt
- 3 cups of all purpose flour
Mix the warm water and yeast pack in a large bowl and let the yeast dissolve. Add in the rest of the ingredients and mix until everything forms the dough ball. Cover the dough and let is rest about 15 minutes. Divide the dough into two pieces and roll each of the pieces out.
Sauce
- 1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
- Olive oil
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/4 tsp. or pinch of sugar
- 3-4 chopped garlic cloves
- 2 tsp. oregano
On medium heat add your olive oil, garlic, salt, sugar, tomato sauce and oregano. Let is simmer for about 10 minutes so that the flavors all fuse together. Set it aside to cool.
Toppings
- 1 onion thinly sliced
- 2 cups grated cheese mixture of parmesan, mozzarella, astiago
- ½ lbs. cooked bacon
- Chopped basil
