Pesto Pizza

Saturday night has become our unofficial pizza night. My pizza skills have been improving and this week I was confident enough in my pizza pie abilities to improvise a little. Well, just a little. The recipe is based on Martha Stewart’s pesto pizza recipe which uses the pesto I made myself from my one basil plant (that was the extent of my garden harvest this year.)

My version ended up looking like this:

• 1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp Basil Pesto, (six mini-cubes defrosted)
• 1 lb of raw pizza dough
• 1 sliced plum tomato or a half dozen cherry tomatoes sliced
• 4 1/2 ounces grated mozzarella cheese (what I had on hand)
• sprinkling of parmesan

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Roll out pizza dough, placing on metal pizza baking pan, roll outer edge. Once oven is preheated bake pizza dough for 5 minutes. (This is actually a Sara Moulton tip)
2. Spread pesto on baked crust, sprinkle with grated mozzarella cheese, arrange tomato slices and sprinkle on parmesan.
3. Bake until cheese has melted and crust is golden brown, about 10 minutes. Slice, and serve immediately.

*Check out my “flour shaker” I read about it in an issue of Fine Cooking, very hand. Just fill an old spice jar with flour.