It’s time for our post on this month’s King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge recipe, Pizza Party Buns.

At our house, pizza is usually reserved for those nights when no one feels like cooking.  If I happen to have dough in the fridge, (We are fans of Jeff Hertzenberg and Zoe Francois’ recipe in Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes A Day.) We will have homemade pizza with whatever toppings I can scrounge – vegetables from peppers to asparagus to butternut squash and/or meats of various kinds.  Sometimes I have sauce on hand and sometimes a don’t.  But I always cheese.  And when there is no dough already made, we have pizza delivered.  All this to say that pizza is most often a lazy day meal.

I was excited to try this month’s Bakealong Challenge recipe because I am good with anything that has pizza in it’s name!  I have to say this at the outset here…There are recipes that look impressive and look like they took a lot of time to prepare and didn’t, and then there are recipes like this one that are actually time consuming, though relatively easy, but take a good amount of time and most people won’t realize what went into its preparation.  That is meant only as an observation, not a value statement.  From start to finish, because my rise times were slow, the making of the Party Pizza Buns took a little over four hours.  Would I make them again?  You bet!  They are well worth the time to make.

The dough is a relatively simple dough, though it does call for bread flour rather than all-purpose.  The liquids used are milk and a little olive oil.  And then of course salt and yeast are necessary.  Once made, the recipe says that the dough should rise until it doubles in size, 60-90 minutes.  Mine took almost two hours and I had it in my oven on the bread proofing setting.

After the first rise, the dough is rolled into a 12×18 rectangle.  This dough was quite cooperative when I was rolling it.  My go-to pizza dough recipe is much more “elastic” and is sometimes difficult to roll.  Once you have the rectangle of dough, it is spread with a layer of pizza sauce, (I used prepared.  I know.  Lazy!)  followed by cheese and then the filling.  The recipe suggests pepperoni; I used finely diced Canadian bacon, green bell pepper, and onion.  Any of your favorite pizza topics will work.  Just be careful to not overstuff!  After all of the “toppings” are added, you roll from the wide end of the dough just as you would cinnamon rolls.  The Party Pizza Buns are then sliced and laid flat on a parchment paper lined baking sheet for a second rise.  I cut mine into twelve slices, each of which makes a meal sized portion.  My rise time took the full ninety minutes.

After the second rise, the buns bake for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees.

We ate them straight out of the oven (Well, after they were photographed.) and they were delicious!  I have some in the fridge.  I’ll report back on how they are when reheated.

I prefer a thick crust pizza  so I loved these; however, if you prefer thin crust pizza, these are “bready”; hence there name, “buns.”  Lol!  Think of them more like a savory cinnamon roll rather than like a thin crust pizza.

I am also going to try using this dough to make other kinds of roll-up type meals.  I think ham and cheese or spinach and cheese would be just as good as the pizza filling.

I hope you’ll bake some Pizza Party Buns along with us and the January 2017 King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge!

from Tracey G

It’s my favorite time – – King Arthur Flour’s Bakealong Challenge time! Ok, I also love Mix Time too, but I really love Bakealong time! As in the household of my partner in crime, pizza is one of those save-mama-some-work dinners here – usually we get take out since my pizza stone cracked in half and I haven’t bothered to replace it. Due to where we live though, we don’t have the opportunity for delivery, lol, so it always still involves some effort – we (read: Jeremy) have to go out and pick it up. But that’s ok, it’s still a time saver! And one heck of a yummy one at that. Depending on where we order from, my favorite toppings can vary, but the boys favorites are: pepperoni and green olives. This can be a favorite of mine as well, but I equally enjoy a meat-free version of green peppers and onion, however, they do not! So, since this batch of Pizza Party Buns would be for everyone in the household, majority ruled, and I opted for the toppings suggested in the recipe, pepperoni and cheese, but added in sliced green olives.

As I read through the recipe for this month’s Bakealong Challenge, I knew what ingredients I had to pick up, the filling items, to be exact. While I always have pepperoni on hand and cheese, I didn’t have any pizza sauce – and I noticed I was low on the other two, so I grabbed some pepperoni and mozzarella cheese too while I was at it. I was ready to roll for whenever I got the chance to make them. Or so I thought. Once I was ready to get started on these, I started gathering my ingredients. Sauce, yep… cheese, check… pepperoni, yes… olive oil, check… salt, right here… yeast, got it… bread flour… Um bread flour… Hello bread flour???? Uh oh. Bread flour is MIA. I was sure I had bread flour – looked through every cabinet…none to be found. Even enlisted Jeremy’s help in the search as he’s my tall person who can check the higher areas of the cabinets easily, lol. But nope, there wasn’t any anywhere. So, when you’re thrown a curve, it’s on to Plan B – all-purpose flour it had to be. The difference between bread flour and all-purpose flour is protein content, bread flour is typically higher in protein content so it aids in the gluten development, which produces and chewier and more elastic crumb. But most of the time it’s ok to swap. And it was this time, as far as I’m concerned, lol. I had no choice! And it was ok! Nothing bad happened!

I too had a bit of trouble in the rising of the dough area – it was incredibly slow! But since it’s cold here in Northern Michigan, it didn’t completely surprise me, just an inconvenience. I don’t have a proofing-setting on my oven, but I do have trick I learned along the way from somewhere – I turn my oven on to 400 for 1-2 minutes, then turn it off and pop my dough in for its rising time. Usually works quite well!

But other than that, the rising, everything came together quite easily – what Kris mentioned about the dough being easy to work with and roll out, is spot-on. I had no issues with mine either. I patted it out into a rectangle with my hands slightly oiled with olive oil, and then rolled it the rest of the way to the desired size of 12×18″. Spooned on the sauce, sprinkled the cheese and toppings then rolled it up. I cut mine into 1-inch pieces, and somehow managed to get 17, I don’t know how I didn’t get 18 pieces, but I must have cut a couple a little larger than the others, lol.

After the 2nd rise, it was time to bake! Yay! And they baked-off beautifully, I think. I didn’t get to eat them straight out of the oven, but I did get to taste-test after they’d cooled to room temperature and they were super yummy – I was so pleased! Harry announced he loved them – and that right there made me extremely happy, 😉 I haven’t tried reheating them yet, but I can say that they are still yummy the next day straight out of the refrigerator! Cold Party Pizza Buns for breakfast! And lunch, and a snack…. Yes, they will definitely be made again, not only are they tasty, but they are very versatile as well – your imagination can run wild with one!