Ben has not enjoyed pizza since he became GF/DF in 2018… today was the day!
It has been a challenge to find the best ingredients that make it feel like the “real deal.”
Let’s be frank…there’s not many substitutions for melted delicious cheese or fluffy crust, enter, the Simply Country pizza creation!
Let’s take a bite!
The first secret is preparing your chicken, the time you take to tenderize, soak, and smoke your chicken breasts make all the difference! We used a pound of chicken breast, we sliced the breast in half fillet style, this makes it thinner and cooks a little faster. mixed it in a bowl of Head Country Original BBQ sauce + topped it with sweet and spicy seasoning. We put our chicken on the smoker and once it is fully cooked, we prepared the meat in either STRIPS or CUBED, you choose!
While your chicken is cooking, cook your bacon, or grab bacon bites from the store, whatever your fancy! Our next tip is, save your bacon grease, yes, like your grandma used to and use it to season your pan for your veggies, yum! There is no seasoning like it.
Cut your bacon into small cubes and keep your saute pan hot for your sweet peppers and onions. We sliced these veggies relatively small and caramelized the veggies.
This is the first time we used Banza pizza crust, we had ours stored in the freezer and removed it earlier in the day to thaw… next time, I think the crust will remain SOFTER if we kept the crust frozen. Don’t be afraid of the word, CHICKPEA… if you’re afraid of trying new and “WEIRD” things… this is a great brand, it’s not funny tasting, promise!
You are ready to build your pizza!
Ben believes he is the master, so we had a “build off” there’s a balance of having the right amount of sauce, cheese, topping ratio, I totally agree, but he is competitive… what about you, are you a total cheese person, lots of sauce? tell us in the comments!
Use the ingredients or substitutions you’d like, you can certainly make this dish NOT gluten or dairy free, it’ll taste great as well!
INGREDIENTS:
Head Country original BBQ sauce
Head Country Sweet + Spicy Seasoning
one bag of Violife shredded mozzarella + cheddar cheese
6 slices of bacon
1 lb of chicken breast
one purple onion
7 sweet peppers
Building your pizza, the order totally matters!
- Get your chick pea crust and lather it with BBQ sauce, I like a great deal of sauce, but use your discretion.
- I was about to put the first layer of cheese when Ben informed me CHEESE goes last…okay… scratch the cheese and start with your veggie mix, then your chicken chunks, bacon.
- top with cheese…then more bacon
- Since I love BBQ sauce so much… .let’s drizzle more across the top!
We put the masterpiece back on the smoker to cure all the ingredients together…since this is our first time using these substitutions, we learned, the cheese pretty much holds the shape of the shredded but pleasantly, this cheese melts!! DF cheese never does that! so great job VIOLIFE brand, you win in my book for that. Keep that in mind, it doesn’t look like it is melting on the top, but within the pizza mixture, it is gluing all the goodness together.
Something we learned is putting the pizza on the top rack to melt it helped, since we weren’t sure if the cheese would change the shape, we brought it into the oven for a quick BROIL…. but then the crust began to crisp and we don’t want that, so just keep an eye out on your masterpiece!
The taste test reveals…. a Simply Country Favorite!