Pizza at Home - Mac and Cheese Pizza

Happy Sunday! Sunday is a day for pizza experimentation! We knew Ruston was coming over for a socially distanced driveway dinner, so we let him choose. 

Ruston - Pizza!

That's a great choice! After talking through a few different pizza options, he decided to let Ian choose which pizza to make. Ian wanted to try the Mac and Cheese pizza! Because I always make at least two pizzas, I asked Ruston what his favorite pizza is. He love ham and pineapple, and when I suggested bacon on it too, he thought it would be even better!

I was having a difficult time actually finding a good Mac and Cheese Pizza recipe. So instead, I found a really well reviewed recipe for regular Mac and Cheese and adapted it. This one is from MomOnTimeout.com for The Best Homemade Baked Mac and Cheese. I'm making a modification to it and adding bacon, because bacon makes just about everything better. 

I'm making a homemade cheese sauce too. Flour and butter get all toasty together and then you add whole milk and heavy cream. I decided to add a little less liquid because mine is going on top of a pizza crust and I want it to be a little more stiff. 

I added salt, pepper, then a bit of sharp cheddar for flavor, and mozzarella for gooeyness. 

I think that'll do nicely. 

Adding in the bacon I cooked a little earlier. 

Toss in the macaroni noodles. The recipe said to cook them for one minute less than the package says. These are slightly al dente, but they'll absorb a bit of the cheese mixture and cook a little more in the oven. 

The other thing this Mac and Cheese needs is a good crispy topping. Boxed mac and cheese is tasty and all, but give me something that's been baked and has a crunchy topping and it's lightyears beyond. And it really couldn't be much more simple. I combined panko bread crumbs with some parmesan that I freshly grated. Then right before I was ready to use it, I drizzled a bit of melted butter into it and stirred everything together. 

Ready to assemble! For the crust, I used my own pizza dough recipe. 

The mac gets spread out onto the unbaked pizza dough, making sure to cover it evenly and 100%. 

Then our delicious bread crumb topping goes all over it. 

Oh yeah. After 13 minutes in a 500F oven, this is looking amazing! 

Can't forget about that other pizza either. Chi had cut up a fresh pineapple (no canned stuff today) so I cubed those chunks a little finer and caramelized them in a pan. 

I added that caramelized pineapple to some cubed ham, shaved ham, and bacon that I had made earlier. 

It also cooks for 13 minutes. Yum!

These both look delicious! 

Let's eat them! 

My plate. 

Everyone was in agreement. The Mac and Cheese pizza turned out wonderfully! It was cheesy, but not overly cheesy. The bacon added a nice flavor to go along with it. The macaroni noodles were properly cooked and not mushy. And the crunchy topping. Get outta here. It's delicious mac and cheese on top of freshly baked bread. How can you not like that? 

And the Ham, Bacon, and Pineapple pizza was really great too. That caramelized pineapple was especially good.

Add another unique pizza to our list of things we've made at home! I'm happy this one turned out so well!