Baked Potato Pizza — The Sunday After the Message

Travis sent me a Facebook message Wednesday afternoon at three-fifteen Eastern. My biological father. He had not contacted me in nineteen years. He had left Mama and Cody and me when I was three years old, in 2005, and had effectively disappeared from our lives since. I do not have memories of him directly — the photos in Mama’s album are the only memories I have, and the photos are of a thin man with my eyes who is holding me on the porch in 2003.

The message read in part: “I saw the New Yorker piece in 2019 and the magazine excerpt last month and I wanted to say I’m proud of you and I’m sorry for not being there. You don’t have to write back.” The message was three sentences. He included a current address in Tulsa. He did not include any backstory about where he’d been for nineteen years. He did not ask anything from me.

I read the message four times Wednesday afternoon while Brayden napped. I did not respond Wednesday. I did not respond Thursday. I did not respond Friday. I told Mama Saturday morning when she called for the regular check-in. Mama was quiet for a full minute and then said: “Whatever you decide, Kaylee. He’s your father by blood and that’s a different thing than what he was as a man. You decide.”

I have not decided yet. The book launches in three weeks. Travis’s message is sitting in my inbox unanswered while I prepare to fly to Sapulpa for the launch tour. The timing of the message is its own thing.

Sunday I made baked potato pizza because Mama had asked for the recipe Saturday evening after the message arrived — she wanted me cooking through what I was holding, and the recipe-development distraction was the right kind of distraction. The dish is the kind of fusion-pizza that lives in cafe-menu cookbooks — pizza dough topped with thinly-sliced potatoes, a sour-cream-and-cheese sauce instead of tomato, bacon, and chives.

The technique: a basic pizza dough (the same bread-flour dough I’d developed for the cafe’s wood-fired-oven margherita in May). Roll into a twelve-inch round.

The base: a half-cup of full-fat sour cream whisked with two cloves of garlic minced, salt, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg. Spread thin across the pizza dough.

The toppings: one large russet potato sliced very thin on a mandoline (an eighth-inch thick), arranged in overlapping circles across the sour-cream base. Six strips of bacon cooked crisp and crumbled. A cup of grated sharp cheddar mixed with a half-cup of grated Gruyere sprinkled across.

The bake: a five-hundred-degree oven with a pizza stone preheated for forty-five minutes. Bake the pizza for ten to twelve minutes until the crust is deeply golden and the potato slices are tender.

Off the heat, top with a generous sprinkle of fresh chives, additional sour cream dolloped, fresh black pepper. The dish reads as a baked-potato-bar-meets-pizza fusion. Cody got the recipe Sunday night for the cafe-menu file.

I have still not responded to Travis’s message. I will decide eventually. Not yet.

Sour cream base, mandolined potato slices, bacon, two cheeses, five hundred for ten to twelve. Here’s the build.

Baked Potato Pizza

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 65 min | Total Time: 75 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 2 large russet potatoes, scrubbed
• 1/2 cup canned pizza sauce or tomato sauce
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella or any shredded cheese
• 1/4 cup diced onion
• 1/4 cup diced green bell pepper
• 1/4 cup sliced black olives (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat & prep. Preheat your oven to 400°F. Scrub the potatoes well and pierce each one several times with a fork so steam can escape.
2. Bake the potatoes. Place potatoes directly on the oven rack and bake for 50–60 minutes, until a fork slides in easily at the thickest part.
3. Cool & hollow. Remove potatoes and let them cool for 10 minutes so they’re safe to handle. Slice each potato in half lengthwise. Scoop out most of the flesh with a spoon, leaving a 1/4-inch shell. (Save the scooped potato for another meal — mashed potatoes, soup, anything.)
4. Season the skins. Brush the inside of each potato half lightly with vegetable oil. Sprinkle with garlic powder, oregano, salt, and pepper.
5. Add the toppings. Spread 2 tablespoons of pizza sauce inside each half. Top with shredded cheese, diced onion, bell pepper, and olives if using.
6. Bake again. Return the loaded potato halves to the oven and bake for 10–12 minutes, until the cheese is melted and starting to bubble at the edges.
7. Serve. Let cool for 2–3 minutes before serving. These are hot — remind the kids.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 225 | Protein: 9g | Fat: 8g | Carbs: 31g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 390mg