The deliciousness of this pizza made up for the fact that I had a really awful time in the kitchen making it. While brainstorming what to do with the multitude of apple butter jars that I had (see Apple (Cider) Butter post) I decided that I would try using it in one of my favorite foods - pizza. I thought I could use apple butter instead of pizza sauce, and in my kitchen I had the makings for pizza dough in a kit (I'm a cheater this time, I admit), and arugula and potatoes that I wanted to use as toppings. From there I picked up a red onion, a pear, bacon, and some Gruyere cheese.
The evening started out nicely enough, I made the dough from the pizza kit, smeared it with apple butter, laid down some arugula, and it wasn't until I was reaching for the potatoes before I hit some roadblocks. I grabbed the first potato and noticed it was a little soft, so I consequently reached my hand in the potato bag again only to have it met with some sort of liquidy, stinky, rotten mess. I lifted the bag up and realized it had been leaking this mess all over my assortment of teas (because yes, I choose to store my potatoes on top of my tea). So the pizza was put on hold while I cleaned and tried to salvage the tea that the rotten potato glop hadn't ruined yet.
I then finished the pizza, put it in the oven, and wanted to sit down and wait with a nice glass of wine. I used my fancy-smancy new wine bottle opener I got for Christmas, and instead of working for me (like it had done in the past) it decided to completely demolish the cork making its removal from the wine bottle impossible. So eventually I figured the only way to get wine out would be to push the remaining cork in and let it mingle in the wine with all the shavings and chunks of cork already floating around as a result of the removal effort.
So the rest of the evening was spent drinking wine poured from the bottle through a fine-mesh strainer into a wine glass - how classy is that! But regardless, the wine was good, the pizza was better, and it didn't need no stinkin' (and I mean that quite literally) potatoes!
Ingredients
(Its a pizza, so I didn't really measure anything...I'm pretty sure that's how pizza's roll)
Pizza crust (I used a Chef Boyardee pizza kit crust)
Apple butter (Find recipe here, or use your own - about 1/2 cup)
Arugula (about a handful or two)
Red onion (about half, sliced)
Pear (about half, thinly sliced)
Bacon (4-6 slices, cooked and crumbled)
Cheese (1/2 - 1 cup, I used Gruyere and I'm happy with that decision)
1. Make crust according to package directions.
2. Slather pizza crust with apple butter.
3. Add toppings in any order you choose.
4. Top with cheese.
5. Cook according to pizza crust instructions. In my case it was around 18 minutes in a 425 degree oven.
