Goat cheese pizza

The recipe first, then the story below!

Ingredients:
1/4 pound thick bacon (smoked if you've got it!)
2 large yellow onions, chopped
2 T leftover bacon fat
1/2 tsp salt (smoked sea salt is great)
1 bell pepper, thinly sliced
A few twists of black pepper
8 oz chevre
One pound of pizza dough at room temperature

Cook the bacon in a cast-iron skillet over low to low-medium heat, turning two or three times. Slow cooking can take 20 or 30 minutes, but renders the fat in thick bacon better.

Pour 2 T of the fat into a heavy-bottomed frying pan over low to low-medium heat. [Save the rest for frying eggs. YUM!] Add the onions and the salt, stir, then cover. After 15 minutes, the onions will have released a lot of liquid and their sharp smell and taste, and should be translucent. Add the bell pepper. With the cover off, keep cooking, stirring occasionally. As they cook, they lose moisture, sweeten up, and slowly turn golden. This take 45 minutes to an hour or more, but produces great flavor.

While the onions cook, chop the bacon, then roll your dough out on a floured board. If you have a pizza stone and paddle, great. Turn the oven on to 450-500 degrees and put the stone in the middle of the oven. I just use a cookie sheet. Shape the dough on the paddle or the cookie sheet. I like it thin, and this dough covered the entire sheet. Thin dough responds better to a hot oven. If the dough shrinks too much, let it rest before stretching it or rolling it to cover the pan/paddle.

Drop the chevre in little bits onto the pizza dough. Spread it if you can. Once the onions and peppers are finished cooking, spread them over the cheese and crust evenly, then sprinkle the bacon on top. Bake for about 10 minutes at 450 degrees, or perhaps 8 at 500. Take the pizza out to cool and add a couple twists of the pepper mill. Let it cool 5 or 10 minutes, then slice it and enjoy!

This is an easy recipe to adapt to other ingredients. Have some arugula? Toss a fistful onto the pizza right after it comes out of the oven. Fresh basil? Toss some on before you add the onions/peppers. Roasted garlic cloves? Bring 'em! Italian sausage instead of bacon? Oh, yeah. Maybe put a smear of tomato paste on before anything else.

The story:
After giving a friend a bowl of delicious trifle made with whipped mascarpone cheese, crystallized ginger, grilled pound cake, blueberries and more, a friend returned the clean bowl and brought me some sage chèvre that she had been given. [Sharing is caring, right.]

As soon as I saw it, I thought, "pizza." She couldn't stay for supper, but another friend had a Portland Pie Company pizza dough and answered my social media call for hungry mouths. The result? This delicious goat cheese pizza with caramelized onions, peppers, and some super smoky Benton's bacon. Yummy! We sat outside on the patio and tried not to distract the joggers and walkers passing by with the sounds of our lip smacking and the repeated chorus of "This is so good!"