Cheese Stuffed Crust Sourdough Pizza

Pizza was on the menu this past weekend, and I thought I would try a little twist on the usual sourdough pizza that I make.  (If you want the sourdough pizza recipe click here).

Today I thought I would try making a Stuffed Cheese Crust Sourdough Pizza using string mozzarella cheese sticks stuffed in the crust to add a little more fun to eating the pizza.

This is my sourdough pizza crust all rolled out.  All I had to do was make the edges of the crust a little higher, and rolled the dough over the mozzarella cheese slices.

I had my homemade pizza sauce simmering while making the sourdough crust.  These are my own home canned tomatoes, and dried herbs from my garden.   I always add a bit of red cooking wine to the sauce, and a couple of drops of oregano oil... and fresh sliced basil... yum! Here is my recipe for all things spaghetti/pizza/lasagna related...

Homemade Spaghetti/Pizza/Lasagna Sauce

Pour into a medium sized saucepan 3-4 cups of canned tomatoes, and 1 small can of tomato paste, and combine.  Add 1 tsp sugar, 1 Tbsp Italian seasoning, 2-3 drops oregano oil, 1/4 cup red or white cooking wine, 1 Tbsp olive oil, and a handful of fresh diced basil leaves.  (The fresh basil leaves, in my opinion, add the most flavor to the sauce, and there is just no substitute for fresh cut basil leaves!)  I also add in about 1/4 tsp or so of red pepper flakes, but this is optional! Let it all simmer together for at least 10 minutes, or longer.  Then you can stir in your hamburger meat, or use the sauce for pizza.  

 After spreading the sourdough crust on the pan, you bake it in a 500 degree oven for approximately 7 minutes.  Pull the crust out and brush on enough olive oil to cover the crust, about 1-2 tbsp.

Then spread on your homemade pizza sauce... (we only made one pan of stuffed crust, and the others were just "plain"...)

The next step is to sprinkle on your cheese.  Here at our house, we love things on the spicy side, so we never use mozzarella cheese on pizza by itself.  I always use a heavy dose of Tillamook Pepper Jack cheese along with shredded Parmesan Romano cheese.  

Here is the "plain" pizza fresh out of the oven...

My son helped me grate up the cheese - he is a cheese lover, and I was glad to have his help grating the cheese, as it helped me with pans going in and coming out of the oven more quickly!

Tillamook Pepper jack cheese going on over the sauce, and then the pepperoni...

... and I added some pineapple to "my" side of the pizza.  My kids just like pepperoni pizza, but I tend to like different toppings, and today pineapple sounded good!

And the stuffed crust pizza coming out of the oven all golden brown and delicious!

YUM!  Luckily for us... the sourdough pizza is so filling that my teenage son ate three pieces of pizza and pronounced himself FULL!  Huh?  How often does that happen?  He had just finished telling me that he could eat a whole pizza by himself while we were working on the pizza... lol! So we were able to freeze one extra pizza for another dinner!  win-win!

Well, one thing I've learned from baking with sourdough is that it does not leave a "heavy" feeling in your stomach after eating it,  unlike other kinds of breads with yeast in them.  We have also found that sourdough seems to fill you up sooner, and doesn't make your stomach feel like you're carrying around a ton of rocks either.  It has become the bread of choice around here!

You can make a stuffed crust pizza with any pizza crust recipe, although it certainly paired wonderfully with sourdough!  I am loving all my sourdough adventures... so how about you?  Any luck, adventures, tips or tricks with sourdough?  I'd love to hear if you have.  :)