Recipe: BBQ Chicken Pizza With Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

Once upon a time (just a few months ago, really) I had some extra roasted red peppers laying around.  I'd blended some up and added them to some pesto for a pasta sauce which, by the way, was pretty darn good.  Then I saw something on Pinterest.  I just went to look for the pin so I could link to it but it looks like I didn't pin it to one of my boards.  Anyway, the pin I saw was for some calzones with roasted red peppers.  I didn't want to make calzones but I thought that I could make a pizza sauce with my leftover roasted red pepper.  And that is exactly what I did.  CJ and I liked it so much that I did it again today.

This is what I used:

• A pizza crust.  I made my own mostly whole wheat crust.  One of these days I'll get around to putting the recipe and directions for that on the blog.  One day.
• BBQ Sauce.
• Roasted red peppers.  These can usually be found near pickles in grocery stores.
• Feta cheese.
• Mozzarella cheese.
• BBQ chicken.  I just diced up some chicken and cooked it on the stove with some bbq sauce but leftover grilled bbq chicken or shredded bbq chicken would work well too.  If you are looking for a vegetarian pizza, you could leave off the chicken entirely and this pizza would still be good.

This is what I did:

1. Cook the crust without any toppings for about 5 minutes at 350 ish.  It isn't always necessary to do this but I've made a lot of pizza in my day and cooking the crust for just a few minutes before adding toppings really helps make the pizza just a little better.  I think it prevents too many juices from the toppings seeping into the crust, which helps the crust cook more evenly and thoroughly, especially if there are a lot of toppings.

2. Blend up the roasted red peppers until smooth.  If you like your pizza sauce on the runny side, even blend in the juices from the jar.

3. Add bbq sauce to blended peppers.  I actually added about twice as much as is in the picture above.  If you want more of a bbq flavor add more bbq sauce.  If you don't want much bbq flavor, only add a little.

4.  Add toppings.  The order probably doesn't matter too much but I did sauce (which I would assume would usually go on the bottom), mozzarella cheese, bbq chicken, feta cheese.

5. Bake somewhere between 350 and 375 for 10 to 15 minutes.

6. Eat.