Mom's Crappy Homemade Pizza

Okay, that is Selene's name for the pizza recipe I have been using since 1966. My young self had no idea what pizza really was. You see, the pizza we got in school lunches back then, was nothing like pizza. The school cooks used pre-made square pizza crusts, (similar to the round ones you can buy at the market) tomato sauce, process american cheese, and either leftover sloppy joe mix or spaghetti sauce. Baked and served on the plastic trays.
In 1966 I had my first American style pizza, Hawaiian, cold. A group of friends met at Shakey's Pizza Parlor for my cousin Nancy's 16th birthday. My sister, Peggy Ann, and I had never been to a pizza parlor before. The party organizer ordered the pizza when she arrived. Everyone else was late due to 'cruisin' the gut'. It was a townie thing. Anyway, we ate one piece of 'pizza' and were hooked. Another night we tried pepperoni, it was all good.
So, one night I tried to make pizza for the family. It was a disaster. Mom's green cooking encyclopedia, the only cookbook she ever owned, had limited information on pizza. I remember there was a recipe for risen dough that I did not have time to prepare. So, I made biscuit dough from the box, rolled it out, put it on a cookie sheet. I used canned tomato sauce, Tillamook cheddar cheese, raw hamburger, and pepperoni sticks for topping. Well, the dough was not cooked through. The hamburger grease filled the cookie sheet. And the pepperoni sticks were as hard as rocks. We ran to the burger joint and brought dinner home.
Selene calls it MCHP because the crust is too thin,the toppings include ground beef and pineapple, and there is no pepperoni. I make other pizzas, but this was my first and Scott still likes it.

After tweaking my recipe I came up with the following:

Moms' Crappy Homemade Pizza

Biscuit dough
3 cups unbleached flour
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 TBSP baking powder
1 cup water

Mix ingredients together in a bowl. Add more water if needed to make a nice biscuit dough. Roll out the dough to fit one cookie sheet. Bake in a pre-heated 400F oven 10 minutes. Set aside.

Toppings
1 lb ground beef
1/2 medium onion chopped

Cook together in a skillet until well browned, drain the fat.

Now top the cooked biscuit dough with the following (in order):
1 cup homemade tomato sauce
1/3 lb grated Tillamook cheddar cheese
cooked ground beef
4 rings pineapple cut into tidbits
1 ripe tomato, cut into 1/2" cubes
2 TBSP sliced olives
4 or 5 crimini mushrooms sliced
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1 handful Pecorino Romano cheese

Bake at 400F for 12 minutes. Cool 5 minutes. Serves 4

Okay, when I went to the freezer for my homemade tomato sauce, I was out. So I substituted home canned tomatoes. I drained them and crushed them with my hands. It worked. I used the drained juice in the biscuit dough.
Just a note, we didn't have very many tomatoes in the garden this year. So I didn't get to preserve the usual amounts.