Pizza at Home - Mexican Taco inspired Pizza

Happy Sunday! Once again it's time to decide on another unique pizza to make. In a continuing effort to try to make pizza without a tomato sauce base, I stumbled upon tonight's inspiration. My creation tonight is a Mexican Taco inspired pizza!

For the crust, I'm using my own recipe. This is Joe's No Knead Pizza Crust. 

I cooked up some ground beef along with some taco seasoning. 

Instead of a tomato sauce base, I'll be using refried beans mixed with Theresa's homemade salsa. Theresa uses a recipe from foodnetwork.com for Restaurant-Style Salsa and it's a favorite with everyone here. 

My pizza dough has gone through a few rise cycles. I'm finally ready for it. 

I spread out my dough on parchment and spread my beans/salsa mixture on the top. 

Oh hi!

Then it was topped with cheddar cheese, because that's what you'd get on a taco or mexican pizza. 

Finish it off with the seasoned ground beef, sliced tomatoes, and olives (which Theresa insisted belonged on a Mexican pizza). 

It came out of the oven looking like this! Yum! But we're not through yet!

I've got a few things that are going on top of the pizza that don't get baked. Earlier in the day I made them. First I wanted a tasty guacamole. My favorite is the recipe from culinaryhill.com for Chipotle Guacamole (copycat). 

I used a lemon from our tree and a fresh lime from the grocery store. After smashing it all up, it went into the fridge for the flavors to meld together. 

Right before serving, I piped dollops of guacamole and sour cream all over the top of the pizza. 

Smile kids! Time for something different!

The Mexican Taco pizza looks great! I also drizzled Taco Bell Mild Sauce over the top of it to finish it off. 

For my second pizza I cut up a bit of pepperoni and ham. There was also leftover cheddar from the taco pizza, so that ended up on this one too. 

My plate. 

In a surprise to me, Ian thought it was really good, saying it was his 4th favorite pizza I've made. Alli asked for more whipped cream (she really means sour cream) on hers. And once I finished, she thought it looked like a Minecraft pick-ax. Both kids are really into that right now. 

So how was it? Honestly, a little bland... That surprised me. I think it was mostly due to the refried beans, but I thought the salsa and all the other things would have taken care of that. I think I needed to put a lot more taco seasoning in the ground beef too to make that flavor come through stronger. But, it's still pizza and it's still pretty good. 

Theresa said the real star tonight was the guacamole. I made enough to have with chips and people were chowing down. 

And when it comes to the crust, Theresa has found a new favorite way to enjoy it. Just a little bit of honey. The kids were quick to request some honey for their crusts once they saw her doing it.

So that's my take on a Mexican Taco pizza! Time to start thinking about what I'm going to make next week!