Vegetarian Pesto Pizza!
Ok, this is historic. This is my first pizza recipe ever shared to this blog! It only took a year 😅. Shocking because pizza is one of my favorite foods ever (cliche, I know). And homemade pizza is not that hard to make. In reality making your own pizza at home can take the same amount of time as placing a phone call to your local pizza place, waiting 20 minutes until it's ready, and driving out to pick it up.
Thus, homemade pizza recipes will become much more common around here, I promise.I love this pizza too because it's: A) dairy-free, B) made with leftovers, and C) has all of my favorite things. Anyone who says a pizza needs cheese in order to be good clearly has not tried this pizza with roasted kale, caramelized shallots (game-changer), mushrooms, and sun-dried tomatoes.
The best part is, this pizza was made with ingredients that I mostly already had in my fridge, sans the fresh basil leaves that I needed to make the homemade pesto. Oh, did I not mention earlier that this pizza has homemade pesto? Oh my! And this goes without saying at this point, but this pizza is vegetarian, too! I don't miss meat at all, but I was searching for some type of savory, bacon-y addition for this pizza and went with thinly sliced, sun-dried tomatoes. So good!
When people ask me why I'm so passionate about cooking, I always have a lot to say. I find cooking to be calming yet energizing, rewarding, creative, etc. etc. etc. but I also love to cook for myself because I get to make and eat food that I actually like. There's nothing more disappointing than going out to eat and spending money on food that tastes bland. Such a waste! The food I make is created with all the things I love and know how to make taste good, so it's a treat every single time. This pizza was no exception.
I mean, pesto and tomato sauce and kale and shallots 🤤YUM! And making a pizza is the perfect way to clean out your fridge of fresh-ish ingredients that you have hanging around but don't know what to do with. Just put a pizza on it, it will work. I was also able to get away with buying too many additional ingredients for this pizza because I already had homemade pizza sauce in my freezer from a separate homemade pizza experiment from early this summer. If you're like me and live alone, cook a lot and frequently have leftovers, freeze it! You never know when that extra sauce, sautéed veggie, or herb will come in handy somewhere down the line. Happy pizza-ing!
INGREDIENTS
Pizza Dough
1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon honey
I tablespoon dry yeast
2.5 cups of flour
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of corn meal for sprinkling on the pizza stone
Pizza
2 tablespoons olive oil
pinch of sugar
3 small shallots, sliced thinly
1/2 cup mushrooms, sliced thinly
1/2 bunch of kale, ribs removed and roughly chopped
1/4 c sun-dried tomatoes, sliced thinly
1 c pizza sauce, preferably homemade
1/2 c pesto, preferably homemade
salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes, to taste
leftover basil leaves from homemade pesto
DIRECTIONS
Pizza Dough
Mix water, honey and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough attachment. Leave it for 5 minutes so that the yeast starts to work.
Add flour, salt and oil, and knead in the stand mixer until it comes together, about 2-3 minutes.
Cover with plastic wrap and let dough rise at room temperature for about one hour.
Pizza
Preheat the oven to 450 F / 230 C and place a pizza stone inside. If you don’t have a pizza stone, use an inverted baking tray/cookie sheet
Put the shallots, olive oil, and pinch sugar into a pan over medium heat and cook, stirring frequently, until the shallots are wilted and brown, about 10 minutes. Set aside on a plate to cool.
In the same pan, add a little more oil if needed and cook the mushrooms until browned, about 5 minutes. Place on a plate with the shallots.
Now, add in the sun-dried tomatoes and cook quickly, until browned (this happens very quickly, so keep an eye on it). Place on the plate.
Add the kale to the same pan and cook until it wilts slightly, but not completely. Remove from heat.
Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface. Take out the pizza stone, and sprinkle with cornmeal. Place the dough on top of the stone (the stone will be very hot, so be careful)!
Spread the pizza sauce on top of the dough, followed by about half of the pesto. Smooth it down with the back of a spoon.
Loosely sprinkle the kale, shallots, mushrooms, and tomatoes on the dough, making sure to get an even mix.
Sprinkle with a pinch of salt, pepper and red pepper flakes.
Place the pizza in oven and cook for about 12-15 minutes.
Take out of the oven and let cool for a few minutes. Slice and top each slice with additional pesto and leftover basil leaves. Enjoy!
Adapted From: 7970 Miles