Stuffed Crust Pizza

The kids are home all day with summer vacation.  You know what I mean don't you.  I can't keep food in the house.  There is nothing good to eat.  They are always hungry.  To make matters worse in my house I need to go grocery shopping - so the kids aren't totally off base when they say there is nothing good to eat.  The reality is that there is nothing easy to eat.  What I have in the house requires some preparation, but trust me no one is going to starve.  I decided to make a stuffed crust pizza for lunch today.  I will admit that I have never made one of these but how hard could it be?  I make homemade pizza all the time. 

 Here is my crust recipe:

Pizza Crust

1C. warm water

1 T. Yeast (or 1 pkg)

2 T. Olive Oil

2 1/2 - 31/12 C. Flour

1/2 tsp. salt.

Mix the water, yeast, and olive oil together.  Add 2C. flour and the salt.  Stir with a fork.  Gently work in an additional 1/2 C. flour and let the mixture rest for 10 minutes.

It will look like this:

While the dough is resting brown 1 lb. ground beef with some onion and garlic - just as much as you like - nothing magic about this.  Once the beef is cooked and the fat is drained then stir in 1C. pizza sauce.  This would be a step you could choose to do differently but I really don't like a lot of sauce on my pizza, so rather than cover the crust with sauce I mix it in with the meat.  I probably use the same amount of sauce but it is blended in and not overwhelming to me. Now the dough can be rolled out.  If it is sticky you will need to work in more flour - but you should not need more than another cup at the most.  Go slow because too much flour will make a tough crust.  Just put in enough so you can work with the dough and it won't stick to everything. 

Roll the dough out into a circle a little bigger than your pan.

Spray your pan with some cooking spray and put your crust on top.  Use a fork and poke holes in the bottom of the crust.  I then took about 6 oz. of Mozzarella cheese and sliced it into strips.

Line the strips around the edge of your crust and then

 fold the dough over sealing the cheese in.

Now you can put your meat mixture on to your pizza and then

grate about 8 oz Mozzarella cheese on top.

Bake at 375* for 20-25 minutes

Oh my gosh that looks so good!   See how that crust has just risen. 

You can see the cheese just stringing when you slice it

and look at that stuffed crust.....

Needless to say I did not hear any complaints about lunch today!