Barbecue Chicken Pizza from scratch

Every time I make homemade pizza, I get so excited to eat it that I forget to take a picture first. But after meeting with the Dans over the weekend and discussing the joys of food blogging, I shamed myself into remembering at least this once. And I'm sort of glad that I've waited until now to finally get a shot of my pizza, because this one is the most beautiful yet.

There's definitely a steep learning curve when it comes to throwing pizza dough, and it's taking me a long time to master the skill. But without this tutorial from the Seattle P-I (pdf), I might not have even bothered to try. It keeps getting easier each time (even if I did end up with flour practically from head to toe!), so I'm determined to keep trying until I make the perfect crust.

As far as the pizza itself, there's not much to the recipe. I started by shredding the last two leg quarters from the Orange Chicken for a Crowd that I made on Friday. Look how pretty that dish turned out!

But unfortunately, chicken quarters are actually a bit difficult to eat. And I thought I was being really brilliant because using breasts and legs cut down on the chicken pieces I had to glaze. But it just doesn't seem worth it if I'm completely inconveniencing my guests at the dinner table. I think next time I'll use chicken thighs and drumsticks, or maybe even follow the recipe and simply use two whole cut-up chickens!

Anyway, since I was too lazy to go to the store and we didn't have tomatoes, pizza sauce or mozzarella cheese, I used Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce as the base, covered it with the chicken, cheddar cheese and about four slices of diced, cooked bacon, then baked it on our new pizza stone (thanks Stephen!) at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes. After it came out of the oven, I topped it with some sliced green onions.

And the end result was absolute deliciousness.