Meatball Pizza

For the dough:
Start by adding water, yeast, sugar, and honey to a large mixing bowl. Let this sit and become frothy for about 10 minutes. Take in the smell. It’s wonderful. Once your yeast has activated, add in the salt, olive oil, and flour. Mix this until it forms into a dough ball. You don’t want it sticky, and you don’t want it dry. Add more flour if needed.

Take the dough out of the bowl and put it onto a lightly floured surface. Knead the dough for a couple of minutes, before shaping it into a ball and transferring to another large bowl. Drizzle olive oil over the dough to lightly coat all sides of the dough. Cover with a large enough towel, and set in a warm place to let it rise. The rising process will take a couple of hours, but I like to let mine rise throughout the day as we most often make the pizzas for dinner.

About 3 hours into the rising process, take the towel off and make a fist, and punch it right in the center of the dough. This is called punching down the dough. Cover and let it rise another hour or so. While it rises work on your meatballs. Punch it down again before forming the dough.

For the meatballs:
Add the cut up bread to a small bowl and add in the milk. Let it sit there and get nice and moist.

Into another mixing bowl, add the ground chuck and the Italian sausage. Toss in the Italian seasoning, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper and mix. Drain the milk off of the bread, and toss the bread into the meat mixture. Give that a good mix with your hands, making sure you incorporate everything into the mixture.

Preheat your oven to 400 F.

Get out a large skillet and get that on medium to medium high heat. Add in the olive oil and bring that up to heat.

Start forming your meatballs into golf ball size shapes. My batch made about 15 meatballs, which is nice because you can freeze the leftovers for later in the week. Add them to the preheated skillet, and cook until they are nice and crusty on all sides. You don’t have to cook them all the way at this point. When they are browned on all sides, remove them from the skillet with a slotted spoon, and then add them to a baking dish. Cover with a sheet of foil and place in the oven for 25 minutes.

Now it is time to make the pizza.

Mix the marinara sauce with the chopped garlic and give that a good stir.

Drizzle a bit of olive oil onto your pizza pan or large cast iron skillet. Form the dough into the baking sheet or large cast iron skillet. I went with more of a pan style pizza here as I was in the mood for that. However you can make this and form it anyway you desire.

Spread the sauce all over the dough. Top with the mozzarella cheese.

Slice each meatball in half, and then press each of the sliced meatballs gently into the dough. Let this rest while you preheat the oven.

Warm the oven back up to 425 F. Once heated, place the pizza in the oven, and cook for about 20 minutes or until the crust is golden and the cheese is completely melted and bubbly.

Remove it from the oven and allow it to sit for a few minutes before slicing. Slice into squares, and you have yourself a meatball pizza.

The taste is out of this world. It’s cheesy with a nice garlic, marinara sauce. And those meatballs! Look out sausage and pepperoni pizza, this one is sure to stay! Hope you enjoy.