Pizza Party!

Saturday night, while Beau was volunteering at Forum 35's 8th Annual Art Melt in downtown Baton Rouge, I entertained a small get-together with some best friends/co-workers. We decided on a pizza party, but let me explain. I'm NOT talking about your average Domino's 3 large pizza special that comes with buffalo wings, cheesy bread, and two 2-liter cokes. No, no, no. These were some seriously delicious, homemade, gourmet pizzas.

To keep things fun and interesting, what we decided to do was allow each person (or couple) to bring whatever ingredients they wanted to create their own pizza. The pizzas were assembled and baked one at a time, allowing everyone to sample each one as they were ready - almost tapas style. We LOVE this way of entertaining because it's so easy and low-key. Also, it provides easy table-talk topics (not that we needed it!) This is what we came up with (all on a Boboli crust):

Pizza One: Rosemary and Italian Sausage (Matthew)
- base: olive oil, fresh garlic, goat cheese spread over entire crust
- sweet Italian sausage (cooked before guests arrived)
- ample rosemary
- kalamata olives
- diced red onion
- mozzarella cheese sprinkled on top to set ingredients

Pizza Two: Veggie (Stephanie and Greg)
- base: olive oil, roasted garlic
- fresh spinach
- home-grown beats
- home-grown corn (sauteed)
- goat cheese
- banana peppers
- mozzarella cheese

Pizza Three: 3 Cheese (Kara)
- base: olive oil and garlic
- sharp cheddar cheese
- smoked gouda cheese
- mozzarella cheese
*all grated thickly on top

Disclaimer: These pizzas will make you quite thirsty, so make sure you have 4 or 5 bottles of wine to wash them down with!