Chicken and Pesto Pizza

When meal planning for the week, I always ask my kids for input on what they want for dinners during the week.  Inevitably, every week we must have a "pizza night".  Since I've been trying to control the ingredients in my family's dinners, this week I made my own pizza.  The boys still wanted pepperoni, but I was able to control my own fat and calories by making a grown up pizza of chicken and pesto.  The following recipe for pizza dough was super easy with no kneading required.  It made a really wet dough that cooked up really crisp with lots of bubbly air holes throughout.  Enjoy!

Basic Pizza Dough adapted from Frank Stitt's Bottega Favorita cookbook
Makes 2 12-inch pizza crusts

Ingredients:

1 1/4 c. warm water
1 Tbls. honey
1 Tbls. active dry yeast
2 c. all purpose flour (extra for dusting)
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
2 tsp. salt
1/4 c. olive oil
Cornmeal for dusting

Directions:

1.  Pour the warm water into a cup and stir in the honey.  Sprinkle the yeast on top and set aside while you get the other components of the dough mixed together.
2.  In a large bowl, mix together the flours and salt.  By now, your yeast mixture should be getting foamy.  Add the yeast mixture to the flour mixture with the olive oil.  Mix with dough hooks on your hand mixer until all incorporated.  The dough will be very wet.
3.  Cover bowl with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place for about 30 minutes (dough should be doubled)
4.  Sprinkle extra all purpose flour on top of the dough and dust cornmeal on your pizza pan or pizza peel.  Using a dough scraper, divide the dough in two and place on your pizza pans.  Dust as needed with all purpose flour to shape the very sticky dough into two crusts.


Chicken Pesto Pizza by Joie de vivre
Yields 1 pizza

Ingredients:


1 pizza crust
1/2 cut up cooked chicken breast (I used the pre-cooked, pre-cut chicken breast from Oscar Meyer found in the deli)
1 Tbls. prepared pesto
2 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:

1.  If using a pizza stone, place stone in the oven and preheat your oven as high as it will go.  (My oven hit about 500 degrees F.  Otherwise, preheat your oven as hot as it will go.
2.  If using a pizza stone, place your dough on a pizza peel that has been sprinkled liberally with cornmeal, or place dough on a pizza pan sprinkled liberally with cornmeal.
3.  Spread 1 Tbls. prepared pesto on the pizza dough.  Top with chicken breast and mozzarella cheese.
4.  Bake pizza either directly on pizza stone or in pizza pan for 12-15 minutes until crust is golden brown and the cheese is bubbling.
5.  Enjoy!





This is the book that the pizza dough recipe came from.  It has tons of yummy looking photos and the recipes are easy to follow.