P-I-Z-Z-A, Gimme Pizza!

Does anyone remember that song from that old Mary-Kate and Ashley Sleepover movie? Maggs and I went through a massive Olsen Twins phase.
Listening to Almost is Never Enough.
    I did a recipe on here last summer for fresh frozen yogurt, made with fresh fruits and Greek yogurt and was rather proud of myself for doing something in the kitchen that didn't involve a microwave or a toaster oven. Turns out, I'm not as bad as I thought and there are a few recipes I kick butt with in the kitchen. Most I came up with when I moved out last year, and are relatively easy, with few ingredients, and don't require much time. This one, Pesto Pizza, is adapted from a picture and recipe I found on Pinterest.

 

Ingredients: Pinterest told me to make my own dough. So I bought Pillsbury premade Thin Crust. Pinterest also said I needed mushrooms. I said, "Mushrooms smell like feet," and nixed that one. If you like mushrooms, a) what's wrong with you? b) by all means, put them on your pizza. I bought the biggest organic tomato I could find so I could slice it thin like pepperoni.* I also bought pesto and goat cheese because these two should never be apart, and because they were part of the original recipe. Seriously, greatest combo ever.

Step 1: Prebake. Anyone else hate those dough package things that are terrifying little exploding dough bombs? Because they scare the you-know-what out of me. I stabbed mine with big knife. Anyways, prebake the dough at the time and temp dictated on the package (or by you if you're cool enough to make your own dough - what a little jump-starter you are). Mine was at 400 for five or six minutes. I did five cause our oven doesn't heat evenly and I didn't wanna mess it up.

Step 2: Chop. Whatever ingredients you have, take this time to chop them up. I'm pretty bad at making good use of my time, but I used my noodle here and *discovered just how bad I am at slicing tomatoes thin as pepperoni.

Step 3: Prep. Get all your other ingredients ready. Spoon for the pesto to scoop and spread, toppings and cheese.

Step 4: Pesto. When your dough is finished prebaking, pesto that puppy. I used the whole container, but in hindsight that may have been too much. I got a little overexcited. Pesto has a slightly stronger flavor than your typical pizza sauce and it overpowered the rest of my pizza. I'd use half that much next time, but that's just me.

Step 5: Tomato. I ended up not using all the tomato slices, but I probably could have used more. Really it's all a matter of taste, if you love tomatoes, pile 'em on. If you love mushrooms, keep them away from me.

Step 6: Bake and Cheese. Finish baking the pizza - mine was for ten to twelve minutes, and I might have undercooked it. Once again, we all know I'm weird. I don't like my cheese baked into the pizza. I put it on afterwards. Some of my childhood friends (Hannah or Suzanne) may recall me ordering pizza at Mellow Mushroom without cheese so I could put the grated parmesan on it after it had been cooked. It may be a texture thing, but regardless, I put it on afterwards. Don't judge me. You can put your cheese on whenever you want.

Step 7: Enjoy! There's mini step in there I didn't bother photographing, because it would look just like this photo - fresh cracked pepper. Don't just use the pepper shaker, it's so much better fresh cracked in big peppercorn chunks. I like mine coarse and I like a lot of it. And I definitely did undercook it a tad, but oh well. It was still delicious, and I still ate it.
   
    So take from this what you will - add ingredients, take some away. But all in all, it takes about 20 minutes to prepare and it's not super unhealthy. Next time I may even throw in some artichoke hearts because I feel like that would be delicious.

 

What do you think? Will you try it? What will you do differently? Tell me below!