Another pizza Friday and I am excited, because the work week is over and it is time to relax. This pizza Friday is a long-standing tradition in our house. I can’t imagine life without pizza. I enjoy making my own crust that I use a half wheat flour, so I feel that it is “healthier” for me. Pizza at home has less calories than take out and is just as filling. I am always looking for a new blend of ingredients. I like chicken and bacon, so this dilly ranch chicken bacon pizza came into creation. I wanted to make my own ranch “pizza sauce”, to make it healthier as well. I worry about bottled ranch dressings containing preservatives that are not healthy for me. When searching for ranch dressing recipes a lot of them contained lemon and fresh dill. Since fresh lemons and fresh dill are not pantry pulls for me, I decided to use pickle juice instead. The vinegar of the pickle juice works to provide the acid of the lemon.  What a great creation this was I know you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Dill pickle juice: Growing up my grandmother canned pickles, her cellar would be full of many jars of endless pickles.  Until recently I discovered how useful pickle juice and the pickle themselves can be in many recipes that I make.  I use it to make a sassy sloppy Joe recipe, I use it on my cheeseburger pizza and in this recipe, I use it to make a dilly ranch pizza sauce.  The vinegar of the pickle juice provides that salty, acidic flavor.  The dill used to in the juice provides a citrus flavor combined with a very subtle licorice sweetness.

Rolling the dough: In the past I used a wooden rolling pin for rolling out my pizza dough.  It took a long time to get the crust even and to the shape I wanted.  I have since learned that preforming the dough into the round shape with your hands and then use a rolling pin at the end to stretch it gently to make a larger pizza allowed for a rounder crust.