OK, ok — this is not REALLY a pizza, per se.

I made this dish up one New Year’s holiday with inspirational help from my daughter-in-law, Debbie, who is a fine cook and a baker par excellence.  It’s really just another kind of hot turkey sandwich – there’s no cheese or tomato sauce involved at all – but it’s tasty and a little bit novel in its presentation. We made it the first time for two-days-after-turkey dinner.  Way later on, some time in March, I made it again, because I was doing “spring cleaning”, and I found in my freezer a package of turkey scraps that was supposed to go into one of the soups but never made it, half-cup portions of mashed potatoes (which I always have on hand), a little container of cranberry sauce, and quite a lot of Carter’s bread stuffing loaf. There was even a cup of gravy at the back of the shelf. It was like Christmas all over again!

While it’s a great way to use up leftovers, you can just as easily make one up with store-bought ingredients – rotisserie chicken or deli turkey, canned cranberry sauce or dried cranberries, gravy from a packet or a can (or my No Bird Gravy), even frozen bread dough.  You can add things or leave things out depending on your own supplies and preferences.

 

Ingredients:

  • 1 recipe Potato Bun dough, or a loaf of frozen bread dough, thawed (or you could even buy a pre-cooked pizza shell, but I wish you wouldn’t – the flavor simply doesn’t compare)
  • Leftover Turkey gravy, or packet gravy, or canned
  • Leftover Mashed Potatoes
  • Leftover turkey scraps and bits, or deli turkey, or rotisserie chicken
  • Leftover stuffing
  • Leftover whole-berry cranberry sauce, or dried cranberries
  • You can put anything else you like on the dough — roasted veggies, peas and carrots, whatever….

A word on thawing frozen bread dough – if you have a really good reason not to make your own dough, here’s a word on thawing a frozen loaf.  Even if you can plan ahead, it may take as long as 2 days to thaw that puppy out in the fridge.  You CAN thaw it on the kitchen counter (on a greased plate, covered with plastic wrap) if you remember to take it out of the freezer in the morning.  If you follow the directions for microwave thawing, you run the risk of baking the dough in spots while it’s still frozen in others.  It’s better to seal it into zip-lock bag (even in two, one inside the other), removing as much air as you can, and submerge it in warm (not boiling hot) water, which you will need to change a couple of time as the dough warms up – it might be thawed in an hour.  By the time you’ve gone through all that ritual, you could have made your dough from scratch.  I’m just sayin….

You can make this pizza as big or as small as you want.  Use some or all of the potato bread, or thawed bread dough, to make a pizza base.  If you use the whole recipe of potato bread, or a whole loaf of frozen bread, your “pizza” will be lovely and thick, and at least 12 inches in diameter, or as big as your biggest pizza pan, or a full cookie sheet.  I used about half a recipe of potato bread, and made the rest into buns. 

Stretch or roll the dough to the thickness and diameter of your choosing.  The dough is somewhat soft, and the pizza often ends up being somewhat heavy, so I put parchment paper under the dough to prevent it falling through the holes in my pizza screen pan.  If you’re planning to bake yours on your pizza stone, parchment between the dough and the stone is a good starting plan — you can slide the parchment out for the last five minutes of baking for that crispy crust.

Make a slurry of mashed potatoes and gravy, about equal parts.  This will take the place of tomato sauce in “gluing” the loose bits to the crust.  You don’t need a whole lot – just enough to cover the dough, leaving a clear margin so everything doesn’t go running off the edges.

Top the “pizza” with as much leftover turkey and stuffing as you need to cover the surface.  Dot with cranberry sauce and little dollops of mashed potato.  If you wanted to add a sprinkling of leftover roast veggies, or some frozen corn or peas for color, that would be just fine.  Don’t make your toppings too thick, but since there is no cheese coming, you can be a bit more generous than you would be with whatever you like to put on your regular kind of pizza.  If you wanted to add cheese, by the way, don’t let me stop you!  The end effect, with the gravy, would be somewhat poutine-like.

Bake in a pre-heated 375°F oven for 20 – 30 minutes.  Position the pizza on the lowest rack of your oven, so the crust will brown up nicely.  Peek to make sure the bottom is brown before you take it out.

Slip it onto a rack to cool a little while you heat up the rest of the gravy you saved, or made, or whatever.

Serve in wedges, with lashings of hot gravy.  And a knife and fork.

When it’s cold, you can eat it like a sandwich – either open-faced, or a couple of pieces stacked tops-to-tops like a closed sandwich.  While I don’t recommend eating it ice-cold out of the refrigerator (ick, ick, ick, cold mashed potatoes), it’s good at room temperature, or warmed a little in the microwave.