Super Supreme Pizza

In elementary school, I had to keep a log of the books I read. I actually enjoyed reading so I didn't see this as a chore. But the best part was getting a prize after reading a certain number of books. What was the prize? A voucher for a small pizza from Pizza Hut. I loved and still do love Pizza Hut. Personally, I think they are the best compared to Domino's and Papa John's. The cheese is seriously cheesy and the dough is soft but can hold up to any number of toppings. Just look at their Super Supreme, the only thing my parents will order from Pizza Hut. After I decided to make pizza for Sunday night dinner, I looked on Pizza Hut's website to figure out exactly what ingredients were on the Super Supreme Pizza. So many! I didn't even know there were four different meats. That's a little too much for me, so I went for just Italian sausage and ham. Even though I bought lower sodium ham, I washed and patted the slices dry to lose even more salt. I bought sweet Italian sausage from Trader Joe's and it tasted EXACTLY like the sausage Pizza Hut uses! Green bell pepper, red onions, mushrooms and black olives were the other ingredients I used, but of course you can add whatever you've got in the fridge. That's the great thing about making pizza at home. You know what ingredients are in the food and you can choose what you want instead of spending maybe half of dinner time picking things out. I used to do that when I was younger and not so fond of veggies as I am now.

The only thing I'm not too crazy about is the pizza dough. While it did cook up nicely, it wasn't strong enough to hold up to all the toppings that I put on. The bottom did not crisp up as nicely. The crust was a wee bit too dense to me, too. I probably did something wrong because the recipe I followed was for a bread machine, which I do not have. It was the only recipe I could find that claimed to be a Pizza Hut replica. Other ones used dry milk powder, which I also do not have, so I didn't even bother with those. I think as long as I got the taste of the toppings down, my mom wouldn't mind if the crust did not taste just like Pizza Hut's. It sure was damn close and good enough for me. My mom loved it, especially since it is not as salty as take-out. I used no-salt-added tomato sauce for the pizza sauce and added no salt except when making the dough.



What I absolutely loved was watching the crust rise. How could the middle of the pizza stay as is while just a 1-inch border around the dough rises to form a crust? And this is when I was baking the dough by itself. Amazing.

Super Supreme Pizza

For the sauce (from That's My Home)
- 8 oz tomato sauce
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1/2 tsp dried marjoram
- 1/2 tsp dried basil [I went for 3 leaves of fresh basil since I had lots in my fridge]
- 1/2 tsp granulated garlic

For the pizza
- 1 batch of pizza dough [I used this]
- 1/2 small red onion, sliced thinly
- 1/2 green bell pepper, sliced thinly
- 3 large button white mushrooms, sliced
- 1/4 cup pitted black olives, sliced
- 2 thin slices of ham, cut into 1-inch squares
- 1 sweet Italian sausage
- 16 oz shredded mozzarella cheese

1. Mix together all ingredients for the sauce and set aside until ready to use. Do this at least an hour before using.
2. Preheat oven to 400F. Spray pizza pan with non-stick spray. Roll out the pizza dough to fit your pizza pan. I used a 15-inch pan. Leave the dough for 10 minutes.
3. Bake the crust either alone or with a bit of sauce on top for 8 to 10 minutes.
4. While the crust bakes, take the casing off the sausage and cook, breaking it up into crumbles. Put sausage into a dish and set aside. To the same pan sausage was cooked in, add bell pepper, onion, and mushrooms and saute for 5 minutes. Set aside.
5. Take crust out of the oven and spread the rest of the pizza sauce on top of the crust. Sprinkle LOTS of cheese. Spread out the ham pieces, sprinkle on the sausage crumbles, then the bell pepper, red onions, mushrooms, and black olives. Sprinkle on some more cheese.
6. Bake at 350F for 20 minutes.

No more free pizza, but I still read. Halfway through One Hundred Years of Solitude. What is everyone else reading?