A good garlicky chicken pizza is a thing of beauty. Something about the marriage of flavors just…works, you know? All that fresh garlic, sautéed in butter and thrown into a béchamel, it’s just lovely. There’s still a novelty to me, too, in using fresh garlic since I never touched one until I moved in with Warren years ago. Why use fresh when there’s garlic salt and garlic powder? That’s the Midwest for you. (not knocking it, I have both in my cupboard)

In spite of all of my good intentions with buying my groceries every two weeks, it has turned out to be only partly practical and I think I’m going to go once a week instead. What happens is that I end up with all this meat in the freezer that I forget to take out the night before, and it doesn’t have the same quality if you defrost it in the microwave as it does if you let it defrost gently in the fridge. Then too, I forget which meals I planned use the most fresh produce and I end up wasting perfectly good Italian parsley and cilantro. Not so practical in this economy! In addition to that, my will to (live) cook is often determined by the moods of my children, so these days if they’ve been beasts we eat spaghetti or Hamburger Helper or Five Guys.

Wednesday was one of those nights, where I had forgotten for about 5 days in a row to take the pork out to marinate for some souvlaki, my ground beef was also in the freezer and we had spaghetti on Monday. And so I figured it was probably a good time to try out a chicken pizza, and I already knew of a good flatbread crust since, if you ask me, white sauced pizza needs thin crust.

Flatbread Crust:

adapted from Mario Batali

3  2.25 tsp packages active dry or instant yeast

3 cups flour

1/2 tsp. salt

Though by flour I mean all-purpose unbleached white flour, I see no reason you couldn’t substitute up to 1.5 cups with whole wheat flour. It would make an already chewy bread chewier, but it would certainly be healthier.

In a large bowl, combine yeast, water and sugar, stirring to dissolve.

Add salt and one cup of flour, and stir with a wooden spoon (honestly, plastic will do just fine if that’s what you’ve got, just make sure it’s sturdy) to make a loose batter. Add remaining 2 cups of flour and stir for a few minutes to get as much of the flour incorporated as possible.

Turn out onto a flat, lightly floured surface and knead for 6-8 minutes, or until your dough comes together in a smooth ball.

(^^^what it looks like when you first bring it together, NOT what it looks like after you’ve completed kneading.)

If there are seams, lines, crevasses in your dough, don’t worry – from what I can tell, smooth refers more to the silky texture of the dough than it does having a perfectly uniform surface.

Drop it into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a towel or saran wrap and allow to rise in a warm spot for 45 minutes.

Remove from the bowl and split into 2 even amounts of dough. Flatten lightly into rounds, cover and let rise for 15 minutes.

While the recipe says to press into 10” rounds, I’m here to tell you I am just not that patient and I busted out my rolling pin for 13-14” circles. If you don’t have a rolling pin, consider a wine or other cylindrical bottle.  Now you have pizza dough and you can put whatever you want on it. Easy, right? 

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees, with your pizza stone/terracotta flowerpot base/bottom of a cast iron skillet already in the oven. You want it to be hot and all three of the above are excellent for the purposes. (p.s, pizza stones are $10 at Wal-Mart right now.)

If you’re using chicken, this is a good time to cook it. I diced up two chicken breasts and cooked them in a little oil, seasoned with salt and pepper and oregano. If you had leftover rotisserie, this would be a great application for it.

White Sauce: (aka garlic béchamel!)

3 Tbsp flour

3 Tbsp butter

Seasonings to taste

(* depending on how garlicky you want)

Don’t let the fancy French name fool you – if you’ve ever made sausage gravy for biscuits, you’ve made béchamel. If you’ve made mac n’ cheese from scratch, you’ve probably made béchamel. It’s just a thickened milk sauce and the base of so many delicious things, which is probably why it’s one of the 4 mother sauces.

In a saucepan, melt your butter over medium heat. Add garlic and onions and sauté until soft, 3-5 minutes or so. Add flour and whisk until the flour and butter have melded, and continue to cook for 1 minute.

Slowly whisk in the milk until you get the desired consistency. I let mine thicken substantially, to like a runny gravy, if that makes any sense. While it’s simmering, add your seasonings – for me, I cheated and went with Italian seasoning mix, with some kosher salt and black pepper.

Pizza assemblage:

Pizza dough

Garlic sauce

Freshly ground black pepper

Grab your pizza baking surface from the oven (use mitts, it seems like a no brainer but just..trust me here) and slide your dough onto it. Grab a ladleful of sauce and spread over the surface. Sprinkle on chicken and tomatoes, cover with cheese. Toss some pepper on and throw it into the oven for 12-14 minutes. Enjoy!