Becca Jane St Clair

I was going to hold off on this post for a few weeks and get some older (well, a few weeks old) recipes posted, but Michelle’s post on The American Resident about homesickness and making comfort food prompted me to post this sooner.

I think most of us who grew up middle class in America know about Chef Boyardee. Those red cans (I swear, it used to be spelled Boy-R-De) were a familiar food growing up. My favourite was the ravioli, and I detested beefaroni. In addition to tins of pasta, Boyardee also made pizza kits, which became a household staple because it was easy to make, and we could put whatever toppings on it we wanted.

Even as an adult, I continued to buy the Boyardee pizza kits because they were inexpensive, and had everything I needed – crust mix, tomato sauce, and cheese. Of course, we started adding shredded cheese to the grated Parmesean by this point.

I love pizza and I love homemade pizza. Moving to the UK, I’ve struggled a bit in finding a crust mix that I like – a lot of the pre-made mixes don’t cook well or taste too sweet and I just don’t have the patience for making it from scratch. Originally, this recipe was just going to be “Easy Pizza”, but when I bit into it I was instantly reminded of the good old Chef Boyardee pizza mixes. I hope this can comfort another ex-pat the same way it comforted me!

You Will Need:
300g Bisquick mix (in the UK it’s called Bisquick Multi-Purpose Baking Mix and comes in the same size box as a cake mix)
200ml very hot water (I used water from the kettle)
Olive oil (or vegetable oil)
tomato sauce (plain passata)
Parmesean cheese
Oregano*
Basil*
Mozzarella cheese*
Toppings of your choice*

*optional ingredients. The main ingredients are essentially the items you need for a Chef Boyardee kit. Any direction involving optional ingredients will have an * in front of it.

Pre-heat the oven to 225C.
Grease or line a cookie sheet (or pizza tray).
Combine water and Bisquick and mix until it resembles dough. If there is still a lot of powdered mix, add a little more water.
Press dough onto cookie sheet and lightly cover with olive oil (a spray bottle is ideal).
Bake for 5 minutes.
Remove from oven and top pizza with sauce and *sprinkle oregano and basil on sauce.
Sprinkle Parmesean cheese over sauce.
*Top with Mozzarella cheese and your chosen toppings
Return to oven and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes or until cheese is melted and crust is crisp (it took 12 in my oven).

Enjoy!

~~*~~
The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, or the RSS feed(s), please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users can comment directly on Facebook.]