BBQ Chicken & Pineapple Pizza with Sharp Cheddar and a Southwestern Spiced Crust

This is one hell-a exciting pizza. Just look at it! So mesmerizing. All those flavors and seasonings, but nothing so weird that you wouldn't want to try it. 

I'll admit, I was a huge skeptic of pineapple on pizza for the longest time. You could not pay me a king's fortune to try a bite of "Hawaiian" pizza. In my mind, there was no way I was going to enjoy that. I knew a lot of people that ate it and loved it, but I don't know...I never saw myself as one of those people. 

But then suddenly, I was. The sweetness of the fruit and the way it compliments the the smokiness of the barbecue sauce and other spices on here is one that really satisfies all your tastes at once. You will keep coming back for more until there's none left. 

You could do this pizza on a plain crust, but I wouldn't recommend it. All you have to do to make it "southwestern" is add 1 tablespoon of garlic powder, 1 tablespoon of onion powder, and 2 tablespoons of southwestern seasonings to my usual pizza crust recipe. For the southwestern seasonings, just a spice blend from your local grocer will do. Or taco seasoning would probably work as well. Or if you want to get really fancy and do your own reduced-sodium, extra-spicy, outer space blend, then Pinterest and the internet in general are going to be useful to find whats suits your tastes. 

Pizza toppings:

• 1-2 cups pizza sauce
• Your favorite barbecue sauce, about 1/2 cup (Sweet Baby Ray's is delicoius)
• 1 or 2 chicken breasts
• 1/2 Tbsp. garlic powder
• 1/2 Tbsp. onion powder
• 1/2 Tbsp. southwestern spices
• 1 red onion
• 1 20-oz. can of pineapple chunks
• 3/4 cup sharp cheddar, shredded
• 1/2 cup mozzarella, shredded

Chicken chunks are chunky and yummy.

Make it already:

• Preheat the oven to 350. Dice the chicken into cubes that are about 1 inch in size. Toss it with the garlic powder, onion powder, and southwest seasonings and bake it in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Mine was done in 22 minutes on the dot. 
• Preheat a pan on the stovetop with a bit of olive oil in it. Dice your red onion, and sauté it until tender, about 8-10 minutes. 
• Grate your cheese if you haven't already bought a bag of pre-shedded cheese. Any sort of cheddar will do. I do enjoy the taste of a sharp white cheddar but an orange cheese is fine also.
• When all your toppings are prepared, place the pizza stone in the oven and preheat it to 500 degrees. 
• Take it out when it's reached that temperature, place it on your work surface and place your prepared pizza dough on top. Add the sauce on top of that and be sure to spread it evenly all the way around and to the edges.
• The barbecue sauce goes on next. Mine comes in a squeeze bottle so I just drizzled it around in a spiral working from the outside in.
• Top with onions, chicken, then pineapples. Sprinkle the cheeses on top of that. Then add one more spiral of barbecue sauce on top and get that epic pizza to the oven. 
• Set a timer for 10-12 minutes. 11 was the perfect time for me on this one. 

The only request from the husband about this pizza was "more barbecue sauce." As in, replace all of the pizza sauce with barbecue sauce. Now that's just a little bit too barbecue-y for me. Plus I really like tomato sauce. I like it on pizzas, pastas, or even just by itself. But if you are infatuated with barbecue sauce then go ahead and load it up on your za. 

Also, this was a fork-and-knife sort of pizza. Part of the reason for that is because we wanted to eat it as soon as it came out of the oven, which is probably when pizza is most likely to fall apart in your hand and the toppings will slide off, avalanche-style. To me, eating pizza with a fork takes away the pizza-eating experience that I so look forward to. I just want to pick up my slice and tear off a huge chunk with my teeth as soon as I can, repeatedly. But this za has left me with no choice. But actually, I was okay with that. 

Individual bites can be arranged so toppings are distributed equally between bites, and the cooling process occurs much more quickly. But don't be fooled...when it cools some more and when it comes time for leftovers, you better believe I'll be shoving whole pieces at my face.