What I Ate: Buffalo Turkey Pizza

I've got just one last Thanksgiving leftovers post to share and it's a supremely delicious one. And like I mentioned before, I know it's been weeks since Thanksgiving has ended but if you plan on roasting a giant bird for Christmas, you can use these ideas for your leftovers.

Before I get into the recipe, can I share a story with you? When I was in third grade, my dad bought a computer for the family. It was awesome. I used it to play 'Rodent's Revenge' and used the 'Paint' program to draw random pictures. It was great. The game-playing was rather short lived, however, because I soon had to start using the computer for school. I have a distinct memory from fourth grade when I had to write a book report. I was typing it up on the computer and I guess I hit the 'insert' key by accident at some point between finishing the essay and editing time. As I was correcting and rewriting sentences, whatever I started typing would overwrite what I had previously typed and I didn't know what to do! I was freaking out and I thought I had broken the computer.

To solve the problem, I scrolled down to the end of my document and typed a bunch of blank spaces. I CTRL+C-ed the blank spaces and went back to where I needed to add text and CTRL+V-ed the blank spaces in. Wasn't I such a creative little kid? I'm an engineer now and I think it makes sense.

Anyway, I thought I'd share that story because the day I made these pizzas, the power line along one side of our kitchen (the one that the fridge and range are connected to) freaked out and stopped working for a bit. This was a problem because we couldn't bake our pizzas. And, it had snowed the day before Thanksgiving so the backyard was blanketed in crunchy frozen water so the grill was off limits. I realized that the gas line was still working so I manually lit the stove (because the starters are apparently controlled by electricity) using a blowtorch (which is overkill but I didn't have anything else immediately on hand) and grabbed my grill pan and "grilled" the first pizza on the stove top (until the electric line went back on and then it was back to the oven). Even in my old age (jokes), my creativity still abounds.
Ingredients:
quick pizza dough [2 pies]:
2-1/2 to 3 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon honey
2-1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
1 tablespoon olive oil

buffalo turkey pizza
1 batch pizza dough (ingredients above)
--
1 cup tomato sauce (8 oz. can is what I usually use)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon crushed pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
2 cups grated cheese
--
1 cup diced leftover turkey (or chicken)
1 tablespoon butter
3 tablespoons hot sauce
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 jalapeno, sliced

+ bleu cheese
+ grated parmesan cheese

This post will be relatively be wordless (which you deserve after that long winded introduction) but I do have to make a quick note about this pizza dough recipe. It's the best and I probably won't go back to my default pizza dough because this one is just so fast (30 minutes, tops) and you don't have to wait for it to rise. It uses instant yeast so in the 20 minute resting period (which is just to let the gluten calm itself down to make rolling easier) it will rise a bit and it totally puffs up in the oven, no problem, and it's still quite flavorful. It's just a winner.
This pizza will make you rethink turkey leftovers. You'll look forward to roasting a turkey just so you can make this pizza. I promise.
Here are the recipe pages:

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