As an aside: I have never seen the movie ‘Oliver!’ so I’ve never heard the song I’ve appropriated as the title. I only know the song through my chum Matt, but a quick google search establishes that he was dead wrong when he sang the next line as “hotcakes and mustard”. Please continue to not put mustard on your pancakes, unless you are really looking to stretch your flavor experiences into a weird and unpleasant direction. Moving along.
I have come to rely on my recipe for little pizzas. The boy loves to eat them and loves to help make them, so it both nourishes him and keeps him busy for a bit. There’s no grand secret to the little pizzas, other than the pizza base itself: pitas. Specifically, the “greek-style” pitas that are sold at Costco (4 packs for 7 bucks). You can get the pitas at your regular grocery store as well. Because they’re fairly thick, they can hold a goodly amount of toppings and sauce without collapsing. And, after 5 to 10 minutes of sitting on a baking sheet in a 400 °F oven, they are fully done. The variance in time is strictly crispiness level and cheese melt-a-tude.
As a warning: these little pizzas are not the venue for your bold and complicated pizza dreams. You won’t be cooking the pizzas long enough to cook any raw toppings, so keep it simple. Any meat that you use has to be fully cooked beforehand, like pepperoni or kielbasa. And remember that little grabby hands will be helping you dispense the pizza sauce (just use plain spaghetti sauce), stacking the toppings into a tower, and sprinkling cheese everywhere as they shove handfuls of the cheese into their mouths, so try to keep the chopping and cutting prep work to a minimum while they are in the kitchen with you.
Chris Loblaw, Author 