Stuffed Crust Pizza

My husband and I both work in the world of education, so we were blessed this week to be home on spring break.  Therefore, I have been in the kitchen A LOT this week!

Last night, as I was trying to decide what to make for supper from the list of meals we had on hand (more on that in a later post!), we decided that pizza sounded delicious.  So, I headed to the kitchen to make it - yes, I said "make it".  Though we do eat frozen pizza from time to time, I rather have it homemade!  Or, in this case, nearly homemade.

As I got out all of the necessary ingredients, I thought to myself, "Hmm, stuffed crust pizza sounds wonderful..."; so, I headed to the fridge and low and behold, STRING CHEESE!  I knew this would make the perfect addition to our pizza for the evening.

For those of you that I may have lost in that last little paragraph, let me fill you in - to make stuffed crust pizza, all you really need are some hunks of mozzarella cheese.  So, string cheese makes the perfect ingredient for that cheesy, gooey goodness inside your pizza crust.

Now, I assure you that I followed no recipe when making this pizza (other than the dough, of course).  Sometimes I opt to make dough from scratch, but this particular night I wasn't feeling that, so I grabbed a pouch of the "just-add-water" pizza crust that I had in the pantry.  I made the dough as called for on the package.  But when I rolled it out onto my pizza pan, I made sure to roll it out about 1-1/4 inches bigger than it needed to be so that I could wrap the dough over the string cheese.

I must apologize for the lack of photos in this post today - my excitement for the end result of this delicious pizza got the best of me!

After the dough was rolled out, I cut 5 pieces of string cheese (we didn't have much left) in half and placed them around the edge of the crust about 1-1/4 inches from the edge.  After I had all the string cheese arranged (there were gaps between the pieces of cheese), I folded all edges of the crust over the cheese and pressed to seal.

Above is the completed crust, minus the toppings.  You can see where the gaps were between the string cheese - had we had more cheese, I would have eliminated the gaps.

After completing the crust, you can add your sauce and toppings - ours happened to be plain 'ol pepperoni.  You'll notice that this pizza is fairly small - I did use only one package of the crust mix and rolled it out a little thicker, as this pizza was just for my husband and myself.

Here are some photos of the completed pizza, the second highlighting the cheese baked into the crust.

Stuffed Crust Pizza
1 package Betty Crocker Pizza Crust (or your favorite dough recipe!)
5-8 individual mozzarella string cheese
desired pizza sauce (about 1 cup)
desired cheese (1-2 cups, depending on how cheesy you like your pizza)
additional toppings, as desired (pepperoni, sausage, peppers, mushrooms, olives, etc.)

Make dough according to packaging or recipe.  Roll out dough on pizza pan 1-1/4 inches larger than desired pizza size.  Place string cheese around edge of crust 1-1/4 inches from edge.  Fold over all edges of dough over string cheese and press to seal.  Add remaining toppings and bake pizza according to recipe for dough (mine was 450 degrees for 12-17 minutes).

Bon appetite!