Northwind's Southwestern White Pizza

Ingredients

• 2 heads garlic
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 recipe pizza dough
• 1 (15 ounce) jar of bertolli alfredo sauce
• 4 ounces cream cheese
• 1 cup chopped pickled jalapeno pepper
• 1 cup shredded monterey jack cheese
• salt
• pepper
• ground cumin
• pepperoni
• 2 ounces pine nuts, toasted

Directions

1. 1

   Southwestern Roasted Garlic. Take two heads (not cloves) of garlic, and slice off the tops of them with a sharp knife. Don't bother peeling them. Be careful with this, as the knife can easily slip off the papery skin of the garlic. Get a square of heavy-duty aluminum foil, and set the two heads on top, and gather up the sides of the foil to make a pouch. Don't close it up yet. Add the butter to the cut ends of the garlic, then sprinkle with the cumin. Now, seal your pouch, and stick in the oven at 250 degrees for an hour or so, until the garlic is really soft and mushy and is making you drool from the aroma. You don't want to burn it though. Remove from the oven and let cool until cool enough to handle.

2. 2

   Pizza dough; use what you like. I used the recipe from the Zojirushi bread machine book called "Pizza Dough with Beer", in which one uses of all things, beer, as the liquid ingredient. The dough I formed into a large sized pizza, and then took strips of Monterey Jack cheese and rolled and sealed them into the edges of the crust, stuffed-crust style. Dock the crust with a docker or fork. This just means to prick it all over the middle part (not the edges) so that it doesn't inflate like a pita bread. With the oven on as high as it would go, (550 degrees), I slid this off of the peel onto my pizza stone, and let it bake until it was half done. Remove from oven and let cool. I do this because I like a crispy and chewy crust. I found that by half-baking on the stone, then topping the pie and then baking it again on the standard oven rack achieves these qualities quite nicely.

3. 3

   For the sauce, squeeze all of the garlic out of the husks and into a saucepan. Add the Alfredo sauce, cream cheese and jalapenos, and heat mixture until it's almost ready to boil. Make sure the cream cheese melts. Quickly stir in the jack cheese, allow it to melt. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and cumin. It should be quite hot (spicy).

4. 4

   Spread about half the sauce onto the crust, and then top as desired.

5. 5

   For the toppings, use what you like. I used ultra thin pepperoni slices (I like them best when they get crispy in the oven) and more Monterey Jack cheese. Next time I will add a fistful of chopped cilantro under the pepperoni so it doesn't burn.

6. 6

   Return to the oven again (this time use the oven rack instead of the stone. This will allow the crust to get that nice crispy - chewy texture that many of us like.) until it's done. In my oven, this took 6 minutes. You should have enough sauce and crust for two large pizzas.

7. 7

   VARIATION -I just made this for lunch. Do as above, except I topped the pie with some chuck steak that was cooked as for fajitas on the grill last night. I stirred the steak pieces in some barbecue sauce before I put them on top of the sauced pizza. Then covered with Colby cheese, and sliced fresh jalapenos. This was incredible!