The Dish and Dessert: Holiday Leftover Pizza

The holidays are a great time to eat lots of food, and try everyone’s new twist on classic favorites (like Sweet Potato Brulee!). After a while I get so tired of having even remixed classics that I end up freezing a lot of the leftovers to eat later.

When I opened my freezer and saw my holiday section, I saw the same leftovers that I grew tired of a couple of months ago. I decided to go on an adventure and look for a new way to dress up the leftovers! I ended up looking in California Pizza Kitchen’s Family Cookbook where they had a pizza that used a lot of the leftovers that I still had.

This recipe is extremely versatile and you can make it with whatever leftovers you have from almost any holiday time (my frozen leftovers were from Thanksgiving). It may sound weird, but this pizza was very delicious. I initially scoffed at the idea of topping the pizza with cranberry sauce, but when I tried it on the pizza I ended up adding more to the top of it! It gave the rich cheesy potatoes and stuffing a sweet and tart tang. I will be making this pizza after next year’s holidays, and may even make it the day after (it was really that good!).

Ingredients

Pizza Dough (I made California Pizza Kitchen’s Honey Wheat Pizza Dough)

Left over Cheesy potatoes

Left over Stuffing

Leftover Turkey (cut into small bit size pieces or smaller)

Mozzarella Cheese

Leftover Turkey Gravy

Leftover Cranberry Sauce (I made homemade Cranberry-Apple Sauce for Thanksgiving)

Directions

1. Place baking stone or pizza pan in an oven and then preheat to 450 degrees Fahrenheit (make sure the stone/ pan is hot before you put the prepared pizza on it!).

2. Roll dough to about 9 inch circle (I halved the Honey Wheat Pizza dough).

3. Heat the potatoes, stuffing, and gravy.

4. Lightly mash the potatoes if there are large chunks and then carefully spread onto the dough. Make sure that it does not go completely to the edge so that a crust will appear while baking.

I put a silicon mat under the pizza, so easily put it on my baking stone.

5. On top of the potatoes add crumbles of the stuffing, top with cheese, then add the turkey pieces on top of the pizza.

6. Drizzle the gravy on the pizza and then add numerous small “dots” of cranberry sauce to the top of the pizza. (Remember to put more than you see in my pictures). Alternatively, if you’re still apprehensive about the cranberry sauce, you can let people decide how much to put on their own pieces. If you do it this way though, the flavors won’t mix as much.