For this month’s Monthly Challenge, I decided to try a sausage gravy pizza with an egg. For the dough, I used a Papa John’s emergency clone dough that took two hours to make from beginning to end. I used the dough to make an 8” pizza that was baked on a 9” pizza screen.
As the dough was rising, I prepared the ingredients that were to be used to dress the pizza. I started by breaking up and sautéing some Jimmy Dean’s breakfast sausage in a skillet. The sausage is the one that comes in a tube. I used the “hot” version. Once the sausage was sufficiently browned, I set it aside and left a portion of the rendered fat in the skillet. I used this fat to sauté some diced green pepper, sweet onion and jalapeno pepper. They were then set aside. About 15 minutes before I planned to make the pizza, I used some more of the rendered fat and heated that with some flour. I then gradually stirred in some milk to form a gravy. When that was done, I seasoned it with salt and freshly ground pepper and added the pre-cooked Jimmy Dean’s sausage. That was set aside to cool. I then shredded equal amounts of low-moisture, part-skim mozzarella cheese and NY sharp white cheddar cheese that were to be used on the pizza, and set these aside.
After about two hours of room temperature fermentation, I used the dough to make the pizza. I shaped the dough to form a skin (8”) in the usual manner and placed it on a 9” screen. To assemble the pizza, I started by depositing the sausage gravy mixture uniformly over the dough skin. I then distributed the sautéed green peppers, onion and jalapeno pepper over the sausage gravy mixture. The shredded mozzarella and cheddar cheeses were then distributed over the pizza. The pizza went into my electric oven that I had preheated to about 475 degrees F. I placed the pizza on an oven rack two levels up from the bottom. As the pizza was baking, I partially cooked a large egg in some butter in a frying pan, and moved the pan off of the stove so that the egg wouldn’t overcook. After about 5-6 minutes in the oven, I removed the pizza from the oven and placed the partially cooked egg on top of the pizza, along with a bit more shredded cheeses around the perimeter of the egg. I then put the pizza back in the oven, on the topmost oven rack position, to allow the egg to completely cook. That took about a minute. When the pizza was removed from the oven, I distributed some diced jalapeno pepper over the pizza as a garnish.
The photos below show the finished pizza. I thought it turned out quite well, with a nice blend of flavors and textures. I used only one egg but I could see that it would have been possible to use two and, with some overlap, maybe three eggs. That would allow others to share the pizza. I found that the pizza was too much for me alone.
There is no reason why a different kind of dough can’t be used. In fact, I think that I would go with a more chewy, and less soft, crust next time. The most recent crust did not include vital wheat gluten as I normally use, and I believe the finished crust was a bit softer as a result. Hence, I would be inclined to replace some of the formula flour (KABF) with VWG next time. It should also be possible to use a Papa John’s clone dough that is allowed to ferment overnight, either at room temperature or in the refrigerator. There is also no reason why an entirely different dough can't be used. I used the PJ clone dough in part to see if it would be a good candidate for a breakfast or brunch pizza.
The dough formulation I used to make the above pizza can be seen at Reply 172 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.msg96745.html#msg96745.
Peter
