Iron Chef.... Battle Pizza!

One of the most fun things that results from having a food blog is being contacted to try new products, and while I haven't been asked to try out the newest Viking range or a great new Kitchenaid or Rachel Ray's new cookware. But I was excited when a rep from Pillsbury asked if I would be willing to try and post about some new products, including a new thin pizza crust, frozen mini cinnamon rolls, and Crescent Recipe Creations, a product that is like crescent rolls without those perforations. Well, I don't know about you, but I can hardly say no to Pop'n Fresh (My oldest daughter used to have a little Pop'n Fresh doll when she was a baby!), so I accepted the challenge.
When the products arrived, it wasn't hard to decide which product we were going to review, since the kids were all about making pizza and my husband likes pizza crust thin enough to see through. While you might say, hey, make your own homemade crust, for those days when you need something quick and simple, it is nice to have an option that I (or even my kids) can use to make our own custom pizza! However, we decided to have some fun with this and planned an Iron Chef with Bridget and I as competitors and Molly as our sous chef. I made a score card for all of us to fill out to determine the winning pizza and the contest was on! However, if you are an Iron Chef fan, you know that you have to first unveil the secret ingredient, and so we decided to videotape our unveiling- easier said than done. It took us about 6 takes before we finally got one that everyone was happy with! You can see this is our first experience with video, but getting this right was as much fun as the Iron Chef battle, so I am including this (and the out-takes at the end of the post)

Once the unveiling was done we started our cooking- I was making a white pizza and Bridget had decided to do a red pizza. Her base was sauteed onions, buffalo sausage and a sundried tomato sauce. My entry- caramelized onions, sauteed spinach, goat cheese,and my own secret ingredient- white truffle oil. I would've added mushrooms, but Molly is not a mushroom fan, and since she was a judge, I didn't want to turn her off right away.

While Pillsbury's new thin pizza crust comes in the familiar tube, this is where the similarity ends. The crust rolls out to fill a large pizza or ,in our case, cookie sheet. This pizza would easily feed a family of four. The dough is easy to work with, and spreads out really thin, with a minimum of hassle. We both followed the directions for getting a super-crispy crust and baked the crust for 5 minutes without toppings before adding all the goodies.

Bridget's homemade sundried tomato sauce was spread on the pizza dough after she did the initial 5-minute bake, but I took the working woman's approach and used a bottled alfredo sauce as the base for my pizza, before adding my toppings.

Everyone in our family loves white pizza so I was
really excited to give it a try and the Pillsbury
Thin Crust Pizza dough made this an easy workday meal. Since I love trying new things, this is a perfect product for me and my kids, since it provides a perfect base for new, different and adventurous combinations.

Finally, after getting the pizzas into the oven, we took a breather and waited for the final product, and both turned out with a thin and crispy crust (thin enough even for my thin-loving husband), the perfect foil for both our ingredients.

And the winner?? My white pizza got the highest marks, but really, we were all winners since both pizzas were outstanding and we found a new product that makes it cheap and easy to create you own gourmet pizza at home when you don't have time to make your own homemade crust. And I have to say, we are already thinking of the next combinations we want to try....buffalo chicken pizza, stuffed crust pizza...

For those of you who like a good laugh.... the out takes: