Cake, Batter, and Bowl

Pesto Goat Cheese Pizza

Main Dishes

When it comes to pizza, I’m a crust girl. It can make or break a pie for me and I will often scavenge up extra pieces of crust from my crazy family members who are somehow not all about the carbs. The very first thing I made with my sourdough starter was this amazing pizza dough, which resulted in the very best crust I’ve ever made! It’s an ideal way to use up some of starter that you would otherwise throw away when you’re feeding your culture, and the resulting crust had the perfect amount of tang and chew. It just baked up beautifully and I felt like I was in a pizzeria!

I love pizza of all kinds – thick, thin, deep dish – I don’t discriminate, but this time went for a nice hearty thick crust and used the entire amount of dough for one pizza. I topped the crust with a generous amount of an arugula and basil pesto blended with a hefty amount of goat cheese. Then I topped it off with lots of chopped tomatoes, mozzarella, and fontina cheese. So good!

Oh, and you can actually buy a sourdough starter if you don’t want to deal with making your own but would like to try a few sourdough recipes at home!

Pesto Goat Cheese Pizza
Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

Pesto Goat Cheese Sauce:
1 cup packed arugula (2 ounces)
1/2 cup packed basil (0.7 ounces)
2 tablespoons pine nuts
1/4 cup finely grated pecorino romano cheese
1 garlic clove
1/4 cup olive oil
6 ounces goat cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt

Pizza Assembly:
1 batch of sourdough pizza dough
6 plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
1 cup shredded fontina cheese

Directions:
To make the sauce, place arugula, basil, pine nuts, pecorino romano, garlic, and olive oil in a food processor and pulse until smooth, about a 1 minute, scraping down the sides as needed. Put in goat cheese and salt and pulse again until smooth.

To make the pizza, heat oven and a pizza stone to 500˚F. Shape pizza dough into desired shape on a peel heavily dusted with semolina flour. Spread crust evenly with pesto goat cheese sauce and top evenly with tomatoes, mozzarella, and fontina cheese. Bake on the pizza stone at 500˚F for 12 to 15 minutes or until crust is deep golden brown. Cool for 5 minutes and slice into 8 slices.

Nutrition: 384 calories, 14.1g fat, 2.2g fiber, 18.4g protein per slice
Cost: $1.67 per slice

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