lick the screen: pesto sausage pizza

Cue the men in the starched white waistcoats because I’m going to need restraints. I’m going to need to be held down, because my obsession with homemade pizza will not go away. What was originally conceived as an unhealthy indulgence gets a dramatic makeover with a handful of healthy ingredients and thirty minutes to kill. For the past two weeks I’ve been fixing homemade pizzas and oh dear god, the permutations are endless. Mixed veggies, meaty variations, triple cheese (gruyere, anyone? HOLD ME!), and a simple miniature pie with sundried tomatoes and curls of nutty Romano cheese. And what I love most about this dish is the fact that you control the ingredients. Long gone are the days of plastic cheese and suspect meat toppings, for here is yet another delicious homemade pizza option — pesto sausage.

INGREDIENTS
1/3 lb of whole wheat pizza dough (store-bought)
2 tbsp arugula pesto
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese
3/4 of a sweet sausage link, casing removed
Salt/pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 425F. In a small skillet, sauté the sausage link. With a wooden spoon, break up the sausage and stir occasionally. Cook until brown, approximately 5-7 minutes.

While the sausage is cooking, flour the counter (and rolling pin) and starting from the center of the dough, roll out until the dough is a 1/4 thick. I tend to like my pizza quite thin, so I keep rolling and circulating until the dough is evenly sized. Transfer the pizza to a cookie sheet.

With a brush, add the olive oil and pesto, ensuring that you cover all of the pizza. I adore whole wheat crust because it’s not only hearty and filling, but it also yields a rustic flavor. That having been said, whole wheat can sometimes be a bit dry, so make sure you cover the entire surface with glistening olive oil. Mind you, we don’t want an epic oil spill, just a light coating.

Add the cooked sausage, cheese, salt and pepper. Cook for 10-15 minutes, until the crust is golden brown and the cheese bubbles and oozes. Cut, serve, sob!

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 2:24 pm and is filed under foodie gal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.