Bacon & Eggs Breakfast Pizza

Bacon & eggs breakfast pizza: individual 8" pizza, crust was too thick but filling for a growing teen.

This is featured right now on Saveur's website and it looked brilliant and yummy so I made it straightaway. The recipe comes by way of Smitten Kitchen, the blog that won Saveur's Best Food Photography Award this year. Smitten adapted the recipe from The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook. Gotta get the cookbook, for the recipes and the photos of Big Sur. I love the Big Sur area: the missions, the rugged coast, the 17-Mile Drive, Pebble Beach and the famous golf club, Carmel and the restaurants nestled among the trees overlooking the Pacific. I just don't get the fuss about The Lone Tree.

This breakfast pizza has just eggs, bacon and cheese and no tomato base. I wanted to add some shiitake mushrooms but couldn't find any locally grown ones and we don't like the ones from China because they are too heavily scented. If I was running out of time, I'd use flatbread--pita, chappati--but I wasn't so I made the simple pizza dough (just bread flour, salt, yeast and water, no oil or sugar unlike the usual pizza dough) according to the recipe, left the dough in the fridge overnight and got up at 4:30 am to take the dough out. Actually that was my plan but I couldn't get up so Hub did. It's good to be married to an early riser if you aren't one.

One ball of dough is to make one 12" pizza but I found that makes a crust that's thicker than usual.  If I were to do it again, I'll make it a 13 or 14" with 4 eggs.  I made two 8" very thick-crust pizzas with one ball of dough so if you like your pizza thinner, make three 6" pizzas with that amount of dough.  I made little changes to the recipe for my convenience. I decreased the salt in the dough and also needed to add extra water . As usual, since I know my yeast is good, I dumped all the dough ingredients into the mixer bowl without waiting for the yeast to froth. Since I don't have a pizza stone, I baked the pizza on the lowest rack and cranked my oven to the highest temperature it can go, 250 C. That temperature is still too low for this pizza because the eggs were just nice by 7 minutes but the crust was still underdone. I don't know if  it was the size of the eggs because my eggs weren't large. To counter the underdone crust and overdone eggs, next time I'll bake the pizza with the cheese first and then crack the eggs over halfway through, or just make sure to use large eggs. The smaller pizzas were okay at 6-7 minutes with the fan on. I fried the bacon and got the cheese and garnish ready the night before so the pizzas took about 10 minutes to prepare and another 7 minutes to bake. So it's a little more work than cereal and milk or grilled cheese sandwiches but I think Wey found it a fun and tasty change to his usual breakfast. I hope Nathan, who car pools with Wey, likes it too  (I let them eat in the car). Hub said it was very good too, and it was, but if you, like me, thought this is pizza, you'll be missing the tomato sauce.

p.s. When Wey came home from school, I hounded him about this morning's breakfast and he said the pizza was excellent "with a capital 'E'". How can I not love him to bits??

Bacon & Eggs Breakfast Pizza (makes 2 x 12" pizzas)

1/2 teaspoon dry active yeast

2 cups bread flour, plus more for dusting

3/4 cup lukewarm water, plus more if necessary

1/2 t salt (reduced from 1 t)

6 strips bacon, fried until crispy & cut into small pieces

1/2 cup grated Parmesan

2 cups grated mozzarella

6 large eggs

freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons minced flat-leaf parsley

2 tablespoons minced chives

2 scallions, thinly sliced (I replaced with basil leaves)

* In warm weather, I prefer using cold water so that the dough will not be a shaggy mess but in cold weather, do use lukewarm water. Add more water by the spoonful if the dough is too dry, add flour by the spoonful if too wet. The dough after kneading should be soft and smooth.

1. Make the dough the night before. Put the flour, water and salt into your mixer bowl and use a dough hook to knead the dough until it is soft and smooth, about 7-8 minutes. Divide the dough into two balls and with your palm over the dough ball on a lightly floured work surface, roll each into a tight ball. Dust a cake pan with flour and put the dough balls inside, then put the pan into a plastic bag, seal it and leave it in the fridge overnight. This'll give time for the dough to relax so that it's easier to stretch.

2. Take the dough out to warm up about 1 1/2 to 2 hours before using it. Switch on oven to the highest temp, about 230 to 250 C in most home ovens.

3. Dust your work surface and roll each piece of dough ball into a 12-13" circle.  Place the pizza  base on a well-floured pizza pan or oven tray, patting out the pizza to stretch it but leaving the edges thicker than the center. Use half the ingredients for each of the pizza: first the cheeses, then the bacon and finally, crack the eggs over. Season with freshly ground pepper and salt (I forgot so I did this after the pizza was done). Alternatively, top the pizza with the cheese and bake 4 minutes, then remove the tray (careful!) from the oven and crack the eggs over and bake another 4 minutes so the yolks are still runny. Or use large eggs as recommended.

4. Bake the pizzas (I found they cooked better with the fan on) until the crust is browned and the egg still easy/runny (less than 8 minutes esp. if you have the fan on) and remove from oven. Sprinkle the parsley, chives and shallot over.

Please refer to Smitten Kitchen's recipe if you are baking on a pizza stone.