Sometimes I prefer to eat my pizza in a rectangular form. Somewhere between a Detroit-style and Sicilian-style pizza, this is one of my favorite ways to spend a Thursday night. I’ll use store-bought pizza dough to make life easy but you can obviously make your own (personally I think that pan pizzas are a little more forgiving than regular pizzas when it comes to the dough, so this is one of the times that I’m all for being lazy). Everything gets assembled in one pan, you clean up while the pizza is baking, and then you pop open a bottle of wine and put on some trashy tv right as the pizza comes out of the oven.

I use this 10 x 14 inch pan, which has the special Detroit-style anodized pan coating. It’s how you get a delicious, crispy crust that’s still chewy in the middle. You can easily sub for a regular half baking sheet instead.

The roasted jalapeno pesto recipe yields approximately 1 cup of pesto. You won’t need it all for the pizza and it’ll keep in the fridge for a few days, so drizzle it on anything and everything. It’s extra delicious on a breakfast sandwich or with scrambled eggs.

Ingredients

For the roasted jalapeno pesto:

• 1/2 cup fresh italian flat leaf parsley
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 green onions, ends and tops trimmed
• 1/2 cup arugula
• 3 jalapeno peppers
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tbsp water
• Salt and pepper to taste

For the pizza:

• 2-3 tbsp olive oil
• 16 oz pizza dough
• 2 cups freshly shredded whole-milk mozzarella
• 1/2 cup (4 oz) cheddar cheese, cut into small cubes
• 1 cup tomato sauce
• 8 oz pepperoni, sliced medium thickness

Directions

1. Drizzle olive oil in the pan. Add the dough to the pan, turning it over to coat it in oil. Gently stretch out the dough towards the corners of the pan. Once it won’t stretch any further without tearing, cover the pan in plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes. Stretch it out again, repeating the resting phase if necessary until the dough fully reaches the corners of the pan.
2. Cover the dough and let it rest for 30 minutes.
3. While the dough is resting, preheat the oven to 500 degrees and position a rack on the lowest part of the oven.
4. Once you’re ready to make the pizza, remove the plastic wrap and gently lift the dough up and/or press down to remove any large air bubbles.
5. Top the dough with the cheese, spreading the cheese all the way to the edges of the pan.
6. Spoon the tomato sauce over the surface in 3 rows. Scatter the pepperoni evenly over the pizza.
7. Bake for 17-20 minutes, until the cheese around the edges is black and bubbly and the rest of the cheese is starting to turn golden and browned.
8. Run a metal spatula all the way around the edges of the pizza to loosen it from the pan. Lift the pizza out of the pan and transfer it to a cutting board. Drizzle with the roasted jalapeno pesto. Cut into squares and serve.