Pesto Pizza

Pizza is not limited to just the tomato sauce that we're used to seeing and tasting on pizza. Pesto works great on pizza. Directions for making your own pesto sauce is here.

I used this pizza dough recipe because I was short on time. I wanted to add a little flavor to the dough so I mixed in a heaping tablespoon of the pesto sauce. 

Ingredients:

 

About 1/2 cup pesto sauce

1 pound sausage

caramelized mushrooms

caramelized onions

roasted cherry tomatoes

1 regular size package bacon

cheese

Cook the bacon. Here's the instruction for cooking bacon in the oven. At the same time caramelize your onions and mushrooms. Here's instructions on how to caramelize onions, use the same technique with the mushrooms. In fact, I put them both into the same pan at the same time.

After the bacon came out of the oven, I removed the slices of bacon and sliced the cherry tomatoes and roasted them in the oven in the bacon grease. I know, not really healthy, but I wanted to get some of the bacon flavor into the tomatoes.

After all the ingredients were prepped I built the pizza. I baked it in my regular oven at 450 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.

My only regret was not having a pizza peel so I couldn't bake it on my pizza stone. But this pizza tasted fabulous using the pesto sauce. I also coated the crust with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled shredded parmesan cheese on it before adding any of the other ingredients. 

Pesto and pizza have something in common. Both are foods that are only limited by our own imaginations. I don't always want a pizza using pesto, but it is a great change of pace for pizza.