Making Amazingly Simple Pizza From Scratch Part Three: The Pizza

This is the part when the dough and sauce are combined and you get to use your imagination and your taste. The toppings that follow were tremendously popular, even though a Rex Pizza was never an official pizza, nor was it on the menu.

The truth is, you can use any toppings you want. The ones listed here are just for the Rex Pizza, which many people also called the “Kitchen Sink Pizza” because that was almost the only thing I didn’t put on it. The steps for putting it all together are the same, regardless of the toppings you want to use.

I’d be thrilled, though, if someone actually tried the Rex Pizza and reported back on how much they liked it. The owner of the parlor and his wife even asked for this pizza, though only when they were really hungry.

As just a brief note, I should explain that the reason I came up with this pizza is that as a manager, I was allowed to make a pizza for myself and my family every night, free of charge. Since my son, daughter, wife, and myself all have varied tastes, this pizza basically appealed to everyone in the household.

Rex Pizza ingredients:

2 pizza crusts

pizza sauce

Several tablespoons coarse cornmeal

1 pound shredded mozzarella cheese or other soft cheese

1/4 pound ground beef, cooked and scrambled

1/4 pound pork sausage, cooked and scrambled

30 slices Canadian bacon

1/4 pound sliced mushrooms

1 large onion, diced

1/4 pound sliced black olives

1 12-oz can pineapple chunks

2 large tomatoes, sliced

1 6-oz can crushed shrimp

Rex Pizza instructions:

1. Sprinkle the cornmeal on two round pizza pans or 9 x 13 cake pans and put the rolled out dough on these.

2. Use half the sauce on each pizza, spreading it out to within 1/4 inch of the edge of the pizza crust. This is easiest to do with your fingertips.

3. Cover the sauce with the shredded cheese.

4. Assemble the pizza in this order: Ground beef, sausage, onions, olives, shrimp, Canadian bacon, mushrooms, pineapple, and tomatoes. More cheese can be added over the top if you like extra cheese.

5. Bake at 450-500 F until the cheese at the edges has melted and browned, about 10-15 minutes.

As you can no doubt tell, this is a pizza with far more toppings than it is crust. It tastes extremely good and it is quite filling. More toppings can be added, too, such as diced bell peppers, linguica or other hard Italian sausages, shaved, or even pepperoni. Personally, we don’t use pepperoni.

The key is the pizza dough and the sauce, so you can add any toppings you want. I imagine that a person could even use (shudder) anchovies. I’m not fond of anchovies, but if you like them, use them.

The really amazing thing is that for our family of four, there has seldom been more than a half of one of the Rex pizzas that end up as leftovers. However, the leftovers don’t last long, either. It is common for them to be gone before noon, the following day.

This is an excellent pizza and I hope you try it. Even if you do not, at least try the pizza dough and sauce, with your own choice of toppings. If you love pizza, you won’t regret it.