I’ve been seeing lots of green this week.  I have more frozen pesto than I know what to do with, so I decided to attempt to concoct a pesto chicken pizza.

I really only needed a few more ingredients, since the grunt work of making the sauce was already done.  I swung by Trader Joe’s and picked up 16 oz. of pre-made whole wheat pizza dough, mozzarella and pre-grilled chicken:

Unfortunately, I don’t have a fancy pizza stone, so I just stretched the dough out on a lightly floured cookie sheet.  This actually proved to be tougher than I thought.  The dough was seriously resistant and kept shrinking back in towards the center.  The dough finally won and I settled on a smaller pizza.

The next step was spreading about a cup of defrosted pesto over the dough:

I sliced up about 16 ounces of mozzarella and topped the pizza with pine nuts:

I tossed this into the oven at 450 for 15-20 minutes and pesto presto!  Homemade pizza!

The dishful thinker’s tips:

• Use less cheese than I did!  Don’t get me wrong.  I have an inexplicable adoration of cheese.  In fact, I haven’t met one I don’t like.  But this much mozzarella melted on a pizza makes for a terribly stringy, thick layer of cheese.
• Remember the chicken.  Notice how it’s in the original photo, but it didn’t make it onto the actual pizza.  Whoops!  Thankfully, I was able to add a few pieces to the leftovers (the pizza reheats well and the chicken sinks into the mozzarella.  It’s like I never forgot to add it:))
• This particular batch of pesto was laden with olive oil, which is great on salmon and in pastas.  But it makes for a very soft crust (and I’m partial to thin and crispy pizza crusts).  I may make a smaller batch with less olive oil specifically for pizza the next time I try this out.
• 16 oz of pizza dough stretched out to roughly 10 inches x 14 inches yielded 10 squareish/rectangular slices.

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