Friday nights are pizza night in my house. While we occasionally feel lazy and order take out pizza, the majority of the time it’s homemade, including the dough. Every week we rotate who gets to choose the toppings (if I left it to my husband we’d have pepperoni every single week. Not my thing!). I actually can’t wait for the day when the boys are old enough to not only have their say in ingredients but also help make them!! We’re not too far from that day 
This past Friday hubby and I started discussing the Super Bowl and what our plans were to watch the game, and more importantly what to eat. Believe me, I am not much of a football fan but when one of my former home teams gets into the big game you know I’ll be cheering them on. Gooooo 49ers!!!
Hubby naturally mentioned Buffalo wings. After all wings are his 2nd favorite food group (right there after pizza), which brings us to…
Buffalo Chicken Pizza
The first time I made this pizza, months ago, I tried to transfer this heavily loaded pizza into the oven on the pizza stone when disaster struck:
It did, however, make for a delicious (but unattractive) calzone.
I’ve since learned a little trick to make sure the pizza transfers from the wooden pizza paddle to the stone with no casualties… read on.
Buffalo Chicken Pizza
Ingredients:
Sauce:
- 2 tablespoons butter
- ¼ cup Frank’s Red Hot sauce (it’s gotta be Frank’s, no substitutions!)
- ¼ cup tomato sauce
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste (optional)
Toppings:
- 2 medium sized chicken breasts – grilled ahead of time, thinly sliced
- 2 medium sized celery stalks – diced
- ½ small medium onion – thinly sliced
- ½ cup shredded mozzarella cheese
- ½ cup shredded cheddar cheese
- ¼ cup blue cheese crumbles (optional)
Directions:
Place pizza stone in the center of the oven. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
In a small saucepan heat up the butter, hot sauce, tomato sauce, and tomato paste until combined and thickened. Approximately 5 minutes.
Roll out dough on a wooden pizza paddle to desired thickness (I prefer my dough as thin as I can get it). After rolling out the dough, transfer it into the oven onto the pizza stone and par bake it for about 1 minute — just to give it a little strength to hold the load, then remove it. (If you don’t have a pizza stone and use a round aluminum pizza pan then you can just omit this step of par baking the dough.)
After removing the dough from the oven, load it up with sauce first; then evenly layer the chicken, celery, onion, and cheeses in that order. Bake approximately 12-14 minutes, or until crust is golden brown and cheese is nicely melted.
Wine Pairing?
Two things make this pairing slightly tricky. The first is the hot sauce (*), but as long as you go easy on it (i.e. follow the recipe!) you’ll be fine. It doesn’t have enough heat to burn your ears or water your eyes. The other tricky piece of the puzzle is the strength of the blue cheese. While great with dessert wines, blue cheese can be pungent and difficult to pair with most still table wines. If you chose to omit the blue cheese your options are easier. However, since my husband is from upstate New York (home of the original Buffalo Wing, traditionally pared with nothing other than blue cheese dressing), he would never omit such an important ingredient.
A slightly sweet rosé bubbly will do the trick. A semi-sweet Riesling also works well. You want something that can cool your palate from the heat of the hot sauce, but also to meld well with the blue cheese.
These two wines below are very different but make a great pairing for this pie — I know because I tried them both, along with several other options, when I made this last week. These were the two standouts.
Carpene Malvolti Rosé Brut, NV, Veneto, Italy (sparkling wine)
Avg price: $17 | 12% abv (media sample)
If you chose to go light on the blue cheese (or omit it all together) then this is the wine for you. While the blue cheese was a little overwhelming for this wine (and to be honest blue cheese is overwhelming for many wines), the brightness and touch of sweetness was perfect for the rest of the pizza. Hot sauce craves something cooling and bubbly (why do you think most people prefer a cold beer?). A slightly sweet sparkling rosé provides that for you.
This wine, while quite nice on its own, can certainly hold up to a mild amount of heat from the hot sauce.
A blend of 85% Pinot Noir and 15% Raboso, this sparkler was bright and fruity on the nose with strawberry and raspberry fruit dominating, the body is crisp with strong bubbles ready for some bold food to pair it with. Even if you don’t make this pizza this wine is a great choice for a party wine as it will stand up to a variety of flavors (bold, sweet, spicy).
Rutherford Hill Merlot, 2009, Napa Valley
Avg price: $22 | 13.9% abv (media sample)
This wine is full of lush juicy dark fruit, intriguing chocolate and toasty notes, and enough tannins to stand up to meat but won’t dry out your palate. Surprisingly it was bold enough hold its ground with the blue cheese and had enough body and rich fruit to stand up to the hot sauce.
That being said, if it can hold up to the bold flavors of this Buffalo Chicken Pizza, then you can be sure it will be great with any standard type of pizza for your Super Bowl party (pepperoni, or anything with a standard red sauce). And if your party has BBQ’ed meats instead, then this wine will easily pair with pulled pork, brisket, burgers, or the like.
*Note: If you’re the type who prefers your wings so hot your ears ring loud noises for days, and your eyes water like you’re watching Titanic for the first time, then please, just stick with beer. No wine will benefit from that kind of torture. Hubby recommends PBR.
PS, Since I lived in San Francisco for 5 years I think its obvious who I’m voting for. Who’s your pick for the Super Bowl? And more importantly, what will you be eating and drinking?
