Finally, the day of my first ever pizza cooking competition has arrived, and I was very excited! Because this competition was all about finding the best breakfast pizza, naturally the pizza contest was to be held early in the morning, so I had to prepare myself for this in advance. I often work late into the night, so getting up early is not always that easy. I set my alarm for 5am, as I had to be there by 6:15am, and it was a good 30-40 minute drive to get to the location.
I got up bright and early just as the sun was rising, and began to ready myself. I didn’t really know what to expect, had no idea what my competition was going to be like, or how many people would turn up to try our pizzas! I was mostly excited, but there were a few butterflies floating around in the gut as well.
Arriving At The Breakfast Pizza Challenge
Making Breakfast Pizza For The People
I was the first competitor to arrive and the radio team were still setting up our work stations and equipment. All the ingredients were already supplied, so thankfully that was something that I didn’t have to worry too much about, all I had to do was show up and cook 
Only a few minutes later my first competitor arrived, Emma, so we introduced ourselves and started having a look around the work area that was set up for us. Emma was making a breakfast pizza with the lot, basically every big breakfast type ingredient that you could think of all on the one pizza, so she had a quick look around to discover that unfortunately a couple of her ingredients were missing.
A quick dash to the shops, and a call out on the radio by the DJ solved the ingredient issue, however a bit of stress had set in to start off the day.
In the meantime, Chris, our other competitor had also arrived, so we met and had a quick chat about the upcoming pizza challenge as well. Chris was making a dessert pizza, with strawberries, chocolate, marshmallows and ice cream. The whole day was quite friendly and relaxed, aside from Emma’s issues missing out on some of her ingredients, so we all had a ball together cooking up some pizzas…
The Breakfast Pizza Challenge Begins…
We were asked to begin prepping our pizzas, and straight away Emma and Chris began furiously chopping up their ingredients. For me, I had made the Eggs Florentine Breakfast Pizza so simple and easy that I really didn’t have a lot to do, so I basically started putting some of the toppings on my pizza base and waited for some people to start arriving so I could cook the pizza and make sure it was hot and fresh for the first trials.
Eggs Florentine Breakfast Pizza – The First Trial
My first two pizzas were a bit of a disaster, as the pizza oven was a bit different to what I’m normally used to, and getting used to the pizza stone
which was in the oven took a couple of attempts to get right. I burnt half of the bottom of each base, but luckily half was still good to use, so I kept one side and sneakily threw out the rest so that no one ever knew 
Just as I pulled the first pizza out (I was way ahead of the other two, they still hadn’t put anything in their oven yet), the DJ asked me to come up to the booth and speak on air. So luckily for me I had my first piece to take with me and let him try, while I had a quick chat on the radio about my eggs florentine breakfast pizza creation.
He seemed quite impressed with my pizza, which made me happy, and then I went back to busily making more pizzas. In all, we each made 10 pizzas, and throughout the course of the morning all but only a few slices of mine were left. (Of course, I had a couple of slices of my breakfast pizza, as I hadn’t had any breakfast at this stage either… the DJ noticed this and pointed it out on air lol).
We all tried each others breakfast pizza creations as well, just so we knew what each one tasted like.
Breakfast Pizza Challenge – The Final Result
A couple of hours passed while we were making pizzas for anyone who wanted to come down and try them. It was put to a public vote, so everyone who showed up was able to vote on their favourite breakfast pizza.
The time to announce the winner had arrived, and again we were all called up to the booth so that we could speak on air as the winner was announced. I was quietly confident, however both Emma and Justin had made some great breakfast pizzas, and of course I had no idea how the public were going to vote.
And then the announcement was made… “And the winner, with 6 votes more than anyone else, was…. Mick!”
I had won my first ever pizza competition!
I was pretty stoked as you can imagine, but contained my excitement as best I could while I thanked Emma and Chris for their efforts, and the enjoyable day I had experienced. As runners up, Emma and Chris both received the pizza oven that they had cooked in during the morning. I also took home my pizza oven, while the good people at 96fm are also giving me a $1000 bbq package!
I’d like to thank 96fm for putting on such a great competition, as well as Kleenheat Gashouse for supplying such fantastic prizes. And I’d also like to thank all my friends and loyal readers for supporting and encouraging me (and this includes you!).
All in all it was a brilliant day, and I couldn’t be happier to win the big breakfast pizza challenge Now I have some ideas for a new breakfast pizza chapter for my pizza cookbook…
Mick Reade
