Want pizza? No dough? No problem!

The other night I was craving some pizza, but quickly ran into a problem. I had no dough, and didn't feel like taking the time to make it. So, I decided to get a little creative and use pasta - why not?

Here's the recipe that I whipped up - I hope you like it!

Things you'll need: 


1 nonstick or glass baking dish
1 hot oven (350F degrees)
1 medium pot
1 strainer

Ingredients:


1 lb. pasta (I used penne, but you can use just about anything you have laying around)
24 oz pasta sauce (at the time of this post, Target had 24 oz. jars of Ragu on sale for $0.69 each!)
16 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese

The rest is up to you, based on what you have/want.

I just so happened to have some pepperoni, green bell peppers, mushrooms, and black olives, so I added these to my pasta pizza.

Step 1:
Preheat the oven to 350F degrees

Step  2:
Boil water in the medium pot and add salt. Make sure you have enough water to completely cover all your pasta.

Step 3:
Add the pasta and cook it until it is al dente. The penne took about eight or nine minutes to cook to al dente.

Step 4:
Strain the pasta.

Step 5:
Put a few scoops of the pasta in the bottom of the baking dish - enough to evenly cover the bottom of the dish.

Step 6: 
Pour some pasta sauce on top of the layer of noodles in the dish.

Step 7:
Sprinkle some of the mozzarella cheese on top of the sauce. At this point you should also add some of the other toppings that you may have on hand.

Step 8:
Scoop another layer of noodles on top of your sauce/cheese/toppings layer and repeat steps 6 and 7 until you fill the dish. Your last layer should be cheese and toppings.

Step 9:
Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes. Since the pasta is already cooked, all you have to do is bake it long enough for the cheese to melt and the sauce to heat up. You may need to adjust this cooking time to be a bit higher if you have ingredients like green bell peppers.

Step 10:
Remove aluminum foil and bake for another 5 minutes.


That's it! Enjoy!

I like using a pretty deep dish for this pasta, as it basically turns out like a super-deep dish pizza. Also, I have found that this dish is easier to serve in 'slices' if you use lasagna noodles.