Thai Chicken Pizza

Originally Posted by: Insparkle

I've been wanting to do one of these threads for a while, and I finally got my butt in gear to download the pictures off of the camera.

Today we are making Thai chicken pizza! It's a copycat recipe based on California Pizza Kitchen's pizza, and I have to say that I like mine better. I make it slightly different, in that I don't make two small pizzas as the copycat recipe says, I make one large one.

We'll start with the

Ingredients:

Dough

(from another recipe)

• 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup wheat germ
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon honey

Peanut sauce

• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
• 1 1/2 teaspoons honey
• 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon ginger -- minced
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon chili sauce
• 1 1/2 teaspoons oyster sauce
• 1 tablespoon water

Chicken:

• 1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
• 5 ounces boneless skinless chicken breasts -- cubed

The Pizza

• 1 cup mozzarella cheese -- shredded
• 2 scallions
• 1/4 cup bean sprouts
• 2 tablespoons carrots -- shredded
• peanuts, dry-roasted
• 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro -- chopped

Notes here: I don't have oyster sauce, but I do have fish sauce, and that's what I substitute. Some websites mention subbing soy sauce. And it looks like a lot of ingredients, but it goes together quickly. Get everything together ahead of time.

Method

First we're going to make a homemade salad dressing. I've never made one before, but we'll just "eyeball" everything (thanks, Rachael Ray). I decided to make a honey garlic lime dressing. Just put oil, lime zest, crushed garlic, lime juice, salt, and honey into a blender.

Just blend and taste until you like it, and put it in the fridge for now. (don't use olive oil like I did!)

Now for the dough. Throw the yeast into a mixing bowl and add warm water. I usually use my hand to test the temperature: you want it just above body temperature. Let this sit for a few minutes

(Yes, I'm using a souffle dish - I'm making this at my fiance's and he has limited kitchen gadgets.) Add flour to a mixing bowl...

...and then wheat germ.

And only kosher salt, of course! Unfortunately I don't own a sodium chloride containment unit. Tupperware has to suffice.

Add the bloomed yeast and honey,

and mix. The recipe for the dough says you don't have to let it rise, but I did, for an hour.

At this point, let's go for the wine. Cooking with wine is much more fun, especially for the cook! I usually only like reds, but I like rieslings or gewurtztraminer with this pizza. Don't bother going for the expensive ones with this. I like just a good cheap gewurtz like Fetzers - at Sam's Club for $5.

Ah, that's a nice amount.

Let's cook the chicken. Olive oil in a non stick pan, eyeballing again.

And just cook the breasts until they're done. Note again: NOT MY KITCHEN! I tried to clean it up the best I could.

Take out the peanut sauce that was made ahead of time (see it looking icky in the upper left) and chop up the chicken breasts. Add just enough sauce to coat the breasts like this. Preheat the oven at this time. I'm not precise with my general cooking, 400 F is good for this.

Get the dough and spread on a pizza pan, pizza stone, whatever you have. Poke holes all in the center with a fork, and then prebake for a few minutes, until it just slightly starts to brown. Or just before that, if you don't like crispy crust.

Now take out the baked dough, cover it with the remaining peanut sauce, chicken, carrots, optional bean sprouts (ick), and cheese. Or cheese on the bottom, if you like.

Bake until almost ready, add crushed peanuts and green onions, and then bake a few minutes longer.

Toss the salad with the dressing, and serve! It's very good with a lime slice squeezed over it. I usually also squeeze a lime all around the crust after it's baked.

Money Shot!

This stuff is really good, and actually fairly easy if you have everything set up.

Edit: if you use the dough recipe, don't use all whole wheat dough, like I did - use half and half white. It was very dense and didn't rise at all.

Editor's Note: This is one of my favorite recipes but I'll concur that it suffers a bit from using a fully whole wheat dough. I'll generally go for a less dense non-whole wheat dough as something airier and crunchy suits the pizza better. Make sure you do the prebaking step though as the pizza is fairly wet and gets soggy otherwise.