Claire's Buffalo Chicken Pizza (aka Father's Day Pizza Fest)

Happy Father's Day!! I hope all you dads out there have been sufficiently spoiled today. My husband was inundated with gifts this morning and got to have pizza for lunch AND dinner! We've had a really nice family day, and I hope the husband is feeling loved and appreciated.

I asked him earlier this past week what he'd want for dinner tonight, and at first he wasn't sure then he decided on grilled pizza. I wanted to do something special but couldn't decide what, so I figured I'd make up a double batch of homemade pizza dough and split it into four smaller pizzas so we could have a real pizza feast and have an assortment of pizza flavors.

Two of the ones we did were pretty boring--one with a mix of cheeses and one with meat (pepperoni, sausage, and prosciutto). The husband said I could pick two fancy ones to make. I knew one would be the veggie pesto pizza I make pretty often because we love it, and I had everything on hand to make it.

The fourth pizza caused me some strife. In the March issue of Cooking Light magazine there was a special article on pizzas and several of those looked amazing. I slated one for the fourth pizza but couldn't find arugula at the grocery store. Bummer. So I remembered one I'd seen on my friend Jen's blog that used prosciutto and fontina cheese. But then when I got home and looked at the recipe it also called for ricotta, which I didn't have. Oops. I'd recently had two ideas for pizza toppings and knew I had everything for one of them. So I gave the husband his choice between a Claire creation pizza or a smoked salmon pizza from that issue of Cooking Light. He went with the Claire creation pizza.

Apparently I'm on a buffalo chicken kick lately because that's the kind of pizza he choose. I gotta say I was pretty excited to try it. I figured I'd base it on the buffalo chicken lasagna I made awhile back. All measurements below are approximate.

Claire's Buffalo Chicken Pizza

1 recipe pizza dough (or pizza dough of your choice)
1 cup pizza sauce
1/4 cup to 1/2 cup wing sauce (I used Frank's Red Hot)
2-3 cups diced, cooked chicken
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
1-1/2 cup shredded mozzarella (or pizza blend) cheese

Preheat oven to 450. Roll out pizza dough to desired size. Combine pizza sauce and wing sauce in a bowl. Spread over the dough. Sprinkle chicken and blue cheese on top of sauce. Cover pizza with shredded mozzarella. Bake 12-15 minutes or until crust is golden brown and the cheese is melted.

*****

Like I said, all measurements are approximate. I have no idea how much sauce I used, I poured some into a bowl, added the wing sauce, mixed it up, and called it good. For the chicken I was going to defrost and cook a chicken breast, but then I saw my bag of Naked Nuggets in the freezer (I may boycott Costco if they ever stop selling these, by the way) so figured I'd just heat up those and then chop them up.

I'm going to grill all my pizzas but I included instructions for baking them because it was just easier to type out that way.

*****

Wow. Wow. WOW!!! This pizza was phenomenal!! I think this is our new favorite pizza. The kids had already had cheese pizza by the time this one was done, so I didn't get their take on it, but the husband and I were all over this one!! I'd probably increase the amount of wing sauce I used next time, but I really have no idea how much I even used.

This pizza is definitely going to be a favorite in our house over the summer!! Especially since I always have blue cheese and wing sauce on hand.

(And I do have pictures, but I need to get them uploaded still.)