It’s hard to believe that the year is over and I made it through 52 pizzas. Some weeks were definitely tougher than others. It was often hard to figure out when in our schedule we could fit in “pizza night,” but alas, we persevered and ate our way through the year in pizza.

We kept a ranking of sorts for each pizza we made. By combing our scores, the top 11 of 2011 in were:

Taco Pizza
Peanut Butter and Chocolate Dessert Pizza
Mushroom, Onion, and Swiss Pizza
BBQ Pizza
Chicken, Bacon, and Ranch Pizza
Kale Pizza
NY Style with Four Cheeses Pizza
Spinach and Garlic Pizza
Packer Pizza
Spinoccoli Pizza
French Bread Pizza

Naturally, there were some that I scored high but the husband didn’t, or vice versa, so those didn’t make it to the list. Neither of us were surprised by the pizzas that ended up being our top pizzas of the year. Some of them, such as the BBQ pizza and the spinach and garlic pizza, were old standbys before so of course they’d be near the top of our list.

When I asked the husband what stood out for him he almost immediately said the thin crust we started using toward the end of the year. He’s a big fan of cracker-type crusts so he loved it. I also enjoyed it and will gladly add it to our pizza rotation in an effort to mix things up. It is a nice change from a “normal” crust.

I’m somewhat sad to see the year come to a close, but at the same time, I can breathe a sigh of relief. I’m still going to make pizza in 2012, but not a new one every week. I will probably update this website periodically as I do try new pies.

This is my 52nd pizza, but there is still one week left in the year. Hmm. I’m guessing since I started on January 2nd with the first pizza, it worked out that way. Oh well.

Egg on pizza has intrigued me. It has always sounded so good. There is a small problem though – the husband HATES runny eggs. I love them. I haven’t made a pizza with egg yet because I knew he wouldn’t like it. The time has come for me to say “eh, whatever” and make one anyways. He can eat pieces without egg and leave all the runny yolk deliciousness to me.

I, again, used my standard pizza dough for this pizza. On top of that went some pizza sauce, mozzarella, Parmesan, fresh oregano, and previously-frozen basil. I carefully cracked two eggs on top and slid it into the oven to cook at 500 F for 9 minutes.

I was so paranoid about under cooking the egg that I accidentally overcooked them slightly. They was more medium-like than runny. It was still good, I just didn’t get the affect I was looking for. I liked the pizza and and as expected, the husband did not like the parts with egg. He was a good sport and tried it, just not his thing. Fortunately for him, I left a good amount of the pizza egg-free and he enjoyed those parts. The herbs were a nice touch to the pizza and jazzed up what would have otherwise been a plain cheese pizza. I will try to cook a pizza with egg again, but for a shorter amount of time.

I came across the idea for this week’s pizza while killing time browsing Pinterest. I had, at one time, thought about doing a pizza with hummus, but for some reason I forgot about it. I’ve been eating a lot of hummus lately, so it made sense to do it this week.

This recipe from Budget Bytes was the inspiration for the pizza. I used my standard pizza dough and made a couple of changes to how I prepared the vegetables. Since I’ve been on a major roasted veggies kick lately, I roasted my vegetables instead of grilling them. I used red onion, a portabello mushroom, broccoli, and cauliflower. After coating them with olive oil and a good amount of kosher salt, I let them roast in the 500 F for about 15 minutes oven while the pizza stone was heating up. The veggies went on top of the hummus and I also added some feta because I like feta and because I had some left over from last week’s pizza.

The pizza cooked for about 15 minutes at 500 F.

I thought this pizza was great; the husband said it was “good.” He would have liked it better without the feta, but I thought the feta was a nice touch. The vegetables were delicious. I don’t know why I’ve never thought of putting roasted veggies on a pizza before. The husband even liked the red onion – he was surprised by how sweet it was. I think this is because I roasted them at 500 F instead of what I normally do, which is around 425. The hotter temperature really does make a difference in the taste of the vegetables. The hummus and veggies went together well. This is a pizza I’d definitely make again.

Week 50 – that means there are only two more weeks to this.  Wow, 2011 has flown by!  I had been meaning to make a Greek-style pizza for most of the year, but never got around to it, until this week. No reason really, just never made it before.

After searching the Internets and reading through a few recipes, I settled on one from allrecipes.com. I made some changes, however, to better suit my tastes.

Instead of using a pre-cooked crust, I used my standard pizza dough for this pizza. Also, I wasn’t feeling a mayonnaise-based sauce so I sauteed some garlic in olive oil and used that. On top of that went mozzarella cheese, chopped sun dried tomatoes, chopped kalamata olives, and chopped artichokes. I then sprinkled oregano over it all.

It then went into the oven at 475 F for 10 minutes.

Since we bought sun dried tomatoes from the olive bar at the grocery store, I didn’t have any oil from them to mix into the spinach and sliced red onion. I used about 1 tablespoon of oil from the artichokes instead. When the pizza came out of the oven, I topped it with the spinach and red onion mixture and about 1/2 cup of feta cheese.

The pizza went back into the oven for about 4 minutes.

This pizza was flavorful, that’s for sure. How could it not be between the olives, feta, red onion, and sun dried tomatoes? I liked this; the husband said it was “not bad.” He also said he wouldn’t go out of his way to eat it, which I figured beforehand since he’s not the biggest fan of many of the items on the pizza. I’d eat this again, when I’m craving some intense flavors.

I don’t know about you, but I love brussels sprouts. I’m fully convinced that those who say they hate them have never had them properly prepared. They are one of my favorite fall vegetables so I knew I needed to make a pizza highlighting their deliciousness.

I pretty much followed this recipe from Simply Seeking Life, but used my standard pizza dough instead.  Also, instead of halving the brussels sprouts, I cut them thinner. I think those were the only changes I made.

The dough was topped with garlic oil, sauteed brussels sprouts, and mozzarella.

And into the oven at 475 for about 10 minutes.

Both the husband and I liked this pizza.  I liked it a lot, which didn’t come as a surprise to me. The brussels sprouts get a nice roasted taste from being in the hot oven and the flavor combines well with the garlic oil and mozzarella. I will definitely be making this again sometime.

We had a nice, relaxing Thanksgiving yesterday.  We stayed at home and had a small dinner, just the two of us. This meant that we were left with tons of leftovers. It was pretty comical to look at the dishes and see that we barely dented any of them. My sister, Allie, had suggested the week before that I should make a pizza with Thanksgiving leftovers. I thought that sounded like a pretty good idea so I decided to try it.

The husband came up with the idea of using the stuffing for a crust. I thought it sounded like an interesting idea so I went with it. I carefully pressed the stuffing onto a pizza pan and baked it at 450 F for 10 minutes.

On top of that I put some mashed potatoes and cooked it again for about 6 more minutes at 450 F. If we had turkey, I would have put it on with the mashed potatoes.

After the potatoes were warmed through, I topped it all with leftover cranberry sauce.

This was definitely a fork-and-knife pizza. The crust didn’t firm up as much as I had hoped. I think this was because the mashed potatoes contained quite a bit of moisture. The edges were nice and crispy, but the inside was not. I had contemplated adding an egg or two to the stuffing before cooking it as the crust, but I didn’t.  I’m not sure what that would have done.  Maybe I’ll try it some other time. Even though I was a little disappointed by the crust, we both liked this and thought it tasted great. We also liked that it used quite a bit of the leftovers that are the last to go in our house. I’m not sure if I’d go out of my way to make this every year, but it was a fun way to use leftovers.