Garlic Bread Pizza

This is one of my faaaavourite dishes, I LOVE a good garlic bread pizza (with cheese!). But it's something I have yet to find here in America. I see a lot of French Bread garlic bread, which is nice enough I suppose...or bread sticks, which I admit I do quite like. But in the UK in EVERY pizza place, and a LOT of restaurants (especially Italian ones) you will find the option of garlic bread on a PIZZA BASE. I don't know why it hasn't kicked off over here, you guys are seriously missing out!

So whenever I go to America I find myself craving this dish, among others! Yesterday we were grocery shopping, and we'd paused to chat to someone that my Boyfriend knew (most of the area in which he lives shops at this one supermarket, we always find someone he knows!). I wasn't really involved in the conversation and was just looking around at the shelves when I spotted a "pizza base mix". I have got a recipe to make pizza dough from scratch, but I'm not quite brave enough for that, but this looked simple...I could do that...Plus it was about 60cents...

I picked it up and was going to give it a go last night for dinner, but I was pretty hungry and the instructions were a little too beyond me (I wanted food NOW!) so I had soup (and it was really tasty! Finally found a soup I like!)

Anyway, I decided I'd try it during the day today, lots of time to mess about, and I don't feel pressured by people "watching me". I spent quite a while on google trying to find how to make garlic paste, everyone seemed to say different things!! I eventually went for "softened, unsalted butter" and "5 cloves of garlic", "mix together and spread onto crust" - Simples! :D

The crust mix seemed simple too - Put mix into bowl, add half a "cup" of warm water, mix until moistened. Cover and stand in warm place for 5 minutes (I put it in the pre-heating oven briefly). Knead on floured board (well, I didn't bother so much with this, I did that pretty much IN the bowl). Put on greased pan. Cook for a few minutes. Put toppings on. Cook for 18 minutes.

Too simple I'm sure, I must have messed up somewhere! I did make too much garlic paste, and the butter wasn't softened enough to spread onto the crust. So I blobbed a load on and put it in the oven for a minute, that softened the paste up!! I then put a loooot of grated ("shredded") cheese on to it. The base also doesn't seem to be as big as the box claimed it would...but it is more of a Charli-sized portion :) It's currently cooking away so I'll update you in...12 minutes!

Fingers crossed it goes ok :)

(Note : The photo is obviously not just of a garlic bread pizza, in fact that one doesn't look too great. But it's a photo from Frankie and Benny's, one of my favourite places to go and eat, and it's also a tribute to the dish on the right...the WONDERFUL Mama's Cheesebake which they no longer make, a sad SAD day for us all!)