Pizza Party

My brother is really into making his own pizza and has gotten quite good at it. So, it was a big treat when he came over this week and whipped up some delicious thin crust pizza for all of us.

He gets his dough from a local pizza place. You can go into pretty much any pizza joint and ask for dough and they will sell you however much you need. 

He says the key to a good thin crust pizza is getting the dough nice and thin and using a good quality pizza stone. He puts the oven on 500 degrees and puts the pizza stone in there to get very hot. 

Construct the pizza on a separate wood board and make sure to use ample amounts of flour under the dough so it doesn't stick. Then carefully slide it onto the hot stone in the oven.

His speciality is a truffeled mushroom pie and a bbq chicken pie.

For the truffle mushroom pie (pictured below) he uses a truffled mushroom pesto that he buys at Murray's Cheese in NYC. If you live in the area I HIGHLY recommend stopping by Murray's and picking some up. It's ridiculous! If you don't live by a Murray's you can get the same kind of spread by pureeing mushrooms, garlic, Parmesan cheese and truffle oil. 

We spread the truffled mushroom pesto on the pizza and then topped with fresh mushrooms. Baked it in a 500 degree oven for about 10-12 minutes until it was crisp and bubbly and then topped with a drizzle of truffle oil. It was seriously out of this world!

For the second pie we used BBQ chicken cutlets, shredded mozzarella cheese, sweet onion and fresh cilantro. 

We started by lightly covering the dough with RAO's Marinara sauce and the shredded cheese. We then used diced chicken cutlets in BBQ sauce and thinly sliced sweet onion. Again we cooked this in a 500 degree oven for about 10-12 minutes and then sprinkled with fresh cilantro.

Both pies were so good I can't pick a favorite. 

Good thing I didn't need to as we had plenty to go around!