FlavorWave/NuWave Homemade Pizza Recipe
Making a homemade pizza in my Flavorwave oven proved to be quite a challenge (or should I say disaster?). I have seen the commercials and they rave about the ability of my infrared oven to produce a perfectly cooked frozen pizza. And to be honest, I've never even tried to cook a frozen pizza in my Flavorwave because I could not find a frozen pizza that would fit in it. If you want to put a personal size pizza in there, I suppose that would work, but when I cook a pizza, it's for more than one person.
I also prefer homemade pizza (well mostly homemade since I don't make the crust). There are two reasons I wanted to try a homemade pizza. I could make the pizza the size I wanted by using the browning/pizza tray, and I could add whatever toppings I preferred.
Of course I researched the time and temperature recommended by the FlavorWave oven cooking chart and recipe book to cook a pizza, and again was disappointed. The only recipe that applied to what I was trying to do was for a french bread pizza. I didn't want that.
My first attempt at making a pizza was, as I mentioned, a disaster. Since the oven is supposed to cook foods at half the time of a conventional oven, I simply made my pizza, cooked it for half the time I would have in my conventional oven, and voila! The toppings were burnt to a crisp and the dough was totally raw.
So then it became a challenge. I have found that most foods in an infrared oven need to be turned during the cooking process for more even cooking, and maybe that was part of my problem. But how was I going to turn my pizza over?
I recognized that my biggest problem was the crust. It just wasn't getting done. So I decided to cook the crust before adding the toppings and I started to get somewhere. I knew that some refrigerated doughs advise this, but I didn't know for how long in my Wave oven. I also still had that pesky turning over problem. I finally figured out that once my crust was somewhat done, I could turn it over to evenly cook the other side.
I finally came up with a good recipe for homemade pizza in my FlavorWave Oven.
FlavorWave Home Made Pizza Recipe
Of course you can use whatever toppings you prefer on this pizza. The following list of toppings is what I used. I didn't specify amounts because some people like more of something and some like less. It didn't seem to matter if I piled on the toppings or used very little. The secret is in cooking the dough.
1 can refrigerated pizza dough (I used Pillsbury Classic)
pizza sauce
mozzerella or italian blend cheese (I used 2% and it melted fine)
ham
onions
mushrooms
Lay your pizza dough over the browning/pizza tray and press to fit. You will have excess because the dough is rectangular instead of round. Just trim off the excess. Put your pizza tray on the low rack and cook at 400 degrees for 4 minutes. Turn the dough over with a spatula, lay directly on the rack and cook another 2 minutes. Add toppings, with pizza sauce first and cheese added last. Cook for another 3 to 4 minutes, depending on how done you like your cheese.
It turns out great and everything is well cooked without burning.