Homemade Pesto Pizza

So last night I decided to make Pesto Pizza. A few weeks ago (before this blog), I made homemade tomato sauce (I will write about it when I do it again). Since then, I have been anxious to try my hands at pesto. I got the recipe from Ina Garten on foodnetwork.com.

The ingredients for the pesto sauce are pretty simple: basil, walnuts, salt & pepper, pine nuts, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and garlic. The preparation is fairly straight forward: you put the the nuts and garlic in the food processor and then add the basil, salt and pepper. Then while still processing, you add the olive oil.

Ina's recipe makes a ton of pesto, so if you want less, I would recommend doing a half recipe. As always, I decided to make the full recipe and have two containers in the freezer to use for later.

The pesto turned out really well. The only thing I will change for next time is the amount of garlic - it is potentially overpowering, but I do love garlic...

I have made pizza a number of times and can do the dough pretty easily at this point. Like any rising dough, the pizza dough requires yeast. In addition, you add flour, salt, pepper, olive oil (and I like using rosemary as well) and warm water (to activate the yeast).

The dough has to rest for about 90 minutes and then you are good to go...

This was my first attempt using a pizza stone (these are good because they get really hot and allow you to get the same effect as using a pizza oven...well almost). The pizza came out pretty well, but I think I left it in for a minute too long.