Chorizo Whole Wheat Pizza

I don’t know about you, but in my household, there are his and hers appliances.

I "own" the rice cooker and the fancy wine-bottle opener we received as a wedding gift.

Sam is master of the waffle maker and bread machine. I’ve seriously never touched either one, except for cleaning purposes. Thankfully, he puts both appliances to work. The bread machine has been used for everything from sandwich bread to cinnamon rolls. But it’s most commonly to make dough for our weekly pizza nights.

Like many staples, we have the ingredients for both whole wheat pizza dough and the toppings at all times. The beauty of having go-to dishes is the comfort of knowing how to make something well, and not having to pull out a recipe or hunt down ingredients.

But, it’s fun to mix things up, too.

We had purchased a roll of Chorizo Navarre from Olympic Provisions a few weeks back, and we were looking for a creative way to put it to good use.

I had never had Chorizo before I met Sam. He grew up eating Mexican-style Chorizo, which is basically a heavily-spiced ground pork. We use it in egg scrambles and tacos occasionally.

The Chorizo Navarre we bought was actually a Spanish-style Chorizo, meaning that the meat was dried and cured, charcuterie-style. It's commonly sliced and eaten on its own or with other tapas. But we decided to do something wild.

After topping our pizza with real mozzarella and fresh basil, we swapped the chorizo for our normal turkey pepperoni.

And hoooooley cow. Let me tell you. The hot melty cheese, mixed with the rich, semi-spicy chorizo was pure genius. If I do say so myself. The chorizo changed the flavor of the whole pizza. In such a good way.

What are your favorite creative pizza toppings?