Pumpkin Pizza

Another October brought another Scary Movie Night, my annual ode to finger food and classic horror movies.  This year, Scary Movie Night fell in the midst of my being overextended, with little time to prepare the French classical food of last year or really anything taking over an hour to prepare.  I reverted back to the pumpkin theme and went with pre-made pizza dough, making a variety of flatbread-style pizzas with anything that sounded appealing.

The pumpkin pizza began with the small decorative pumpkins you find in front of the grocery store.  After several failed attempts to cut into those turtle-like shells, I reverted to just sticking the entire pumpkin in the oven.  Sure enough, after 40 minutes, it was soft enough to open and brush with olive oil and salt.  It finished about 20 minutes later, after which I threw it in a pan with sage and butter.

While that was happily sauteing, I tackled the dough.  This is the dough you can find next to the buttery biscuits in the cylindrical cardboard cans in the dairy aisle.  I boldly chose "thin style," and after dividing it into two and contrary to its instructions, rolled it out a bit thinner, with flour and a rolling pin, to the shape of two rectangles.  Roughly speaking of course.  The dough is very buttery and fluffy, not what I would choose for pizzas, so rolling it out is key, as is committing to imperfection when schedules have you constrained.  The instructions call for pre-baking for 5 minutes, which results in the version of the dough you see to the right. 

After the pre-baking, I topped with gruyere mixed with a light dusting of romano and as much of the pumpkin sage as made sense, and baked for another 5-6 minutes or until the cheese seemed adequately melted and browned.

Et voila!  Pumpkin pizza with sage and gruyere.  Enjoyed while watching "White Zombie," the Boris Karloff classic.