Deep Dish Pizza Casserole

This is another one of my husband's childhood favorites. My mother-in-law gave me the recipe and I've changed it up a bit to make it lighter. Try it, you won't regret it! NOTE: I think next time I would chop up some onion, green or red bell peppers, and mushrooms to the mixture to bulk up the veggies in the filling and lessen the points plus value.

Deep Dish Pizza Casserole

1 lb. of ground beef, 93% lean
1 (15 oz) can + 1/2 cup pizza sauce
1 (11-oz) tube of refrigerated thin crust pizza dough
1 1/2 c. shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
1/2 pkg. turkey pepperoni
1/3 to 1/2 c. green olives
1 (14 oz.) can of diced tomatoes (Diced tomatoes with green chiles like "Rotel" would be better...but I didn't have any on hand. Tomatoes help increase the volume of the filling without changing the taste).

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cook meat in a nonstick pan; drain. Return meat to skillet and add green olives, tomatoes, and 1/4 of the pkg of turkey pepperonis. Add pizza sauce and cook until heated through.

Spray a 9x13 inch pan with cooking spray. Place pizza crust dough into bottom of pan and half way up sides of pan. Place pan of pizza dough into oven and bake for 5 minutes to precook crust (crust will not bake thoroughly if you do not do this). Remove from oven and top bottom of pizza crust with meat mixture. Bake casserole, uncovered, at 425 for another 10-15 minutes until crust is golden and cheese is melted.

Serves 6= 10 WW PointsPlus if 8 servings, 8 points plus.