Pizza at Home - Two kinds of Cheeseburger Pizzas

Tonight we continue our weekly Sunday pizzas at home. For this one, I was inspired by a pizza that BJ's pizza has since discontinued. A Cheeseburger Pizza! It was a little odd to be sure, but it was one of Theresa's favorite. Once BJ's stopped making it, we stopped going to BJ's! So tonight, in an effort to bring back that feel, I'm not exactly recreating BJ's Cheeseburger Pizza, but more being inspired by it and making something unique. 

Normally I would post which crust recipe I'm using here, but it's been enough weeks of tweaking the Artisan Crust dough recipe, that I'm just posting what I did. I don't always have 24 hours to wait for pizza dough, so I've made it my own. I also skip the mixer completely and just bring everything together with a spatula. 

About 3 hours before I want to bake, for each pizza, I use 2 cups of flour, 3/4 cups water, 2.5 tsp of yeast, 1 Tbs of sugar, 1 Tbs of oil, and 2 tsp of salt. I might add another few Tbs of water if the dough is too dry. It's meant to be a pretty wet dough. I mix everything until it comes together, but no more. Then about 30 minutes before I'm ready to make pizzas, I'll punch down the dough and separate it into another bowl. 

So if we're doing pizza based on a burger, we're not just going to use a regular pizza sauce. It's going to be something unique. Sauce is tomatoes and ketchup is tomatoes. I think I'll do something with that. 

A spicesouthernkitchen.com recipe suggested mixing ketchup and mustard. A recipe from iwashyoudry.com suggested a fry sauce made from mayo and ketchup. 

And so, here's the pizza sauces for our two pizzas tonight. 

Prepping some of the toppings, I've got ground beef browning along with some bacon cooking. 

After rising a second time, the pizza dough goes onto a piece of floured parchment. I flour my hands and spread the dough out from the middle, making sure to keep a nice edge on the crust. 

The mustard/ketchup base goes down, with a sprinkling of mozzarella. 

This pizza is intended to be for Theresa, so I'm picking toppings that I think she'd like. Cheddar cheese, tomatoes, onions, and yes, even pickles. You might find lettuce on a burger, but I don't know of a good way to put it on pizza. 

Now if I'm ordering a burger, I go in the opposite direction as Theresa. No veggies, thank you. For this pizza, I start with that mayo/ketchup (fry sauce) base and then top it with mozzarella and cheddar. 

Then on top there's hamburger and bacon. Yum!

And you know what else you get with your burgers? A sesame seeded bun. Each of these crusts will have sesame seeds surrounding it. 

Into the oven both of these go. About 12 minutes at 550F. 

Alright kids! Let's eat up!

When these were cooking, these smell just like burgers that are cooking. 

There's our toasted sesame seeds on the crust. 

And my pizza looks just like what I would want. I was going for a Wendy's Jr Bacon Cheeseburger feel, or at least how I order it. No lettuce or tomato. 

My meal tonight. Normally I don't care for pickles, but I think they're required on Theresa's pizza. Plus baking them has taken away a lot of the "crunch" that I don't particularly care for and just leaves the flavor. 

The kids, unsurprisingly, were skeptical of tonight's meal. They've been a party to a few different pizza experiments, not all of them good, so it's understandable. 

But after tasting it, they both changed their tune. Ian liked both Daddy's pizza and Mommy's pizza. 

Alli LOVED Mommy's pizza. It's the first time she's had pickles on a pizza and she loves those. The mustard and ketchup sauce comes through in the flavor a bit too, and she's a big mustard fan. 

Richard was impressed. 

But what about the real critic? Can I impress her? 

Theresa - It turned out a whole lot better than I thought it would. 

She enjoyed the pickles as well. It really does taste a lot like a cheeseburger, just on a pizza dough instead of a bun. Either way, I think we'll count this as a success in the list of pizzas we've tried!