Wanted to put this up earlier but the internet is dead at home, oh well.

So earlier, I put up the recipe for pesto. So what can you do with it ? Pizza is one of them.

I came across this recipe in donna hay’s magazine which I bought for RM10 from those cheaper bookstores. Not 2nd hand, just older issues. But honestly, if you remove the dates of food magazines, I wouldn’t even notice either.

Here’s the recipe for pizza dough

Basic Pizza Dough

1 tbsp dry yeast

1 tbsp caster sugar

1 cup lukewarm water

350g OO Flour *or use all-purpose flour

1 tsp sea salt flakes

1 tbsp olive oil

1. Place yeast, sugar and water ina bowl and mix to combine. Set aside in a warm place for 5 minutes or until bubbles appear on the surface. This means the yeast has been activated.

2. Place flour, salt and olive oil in a bowl and make a well in the center. Add  the yeast mixture and mix together with well-floured hands to form a dough.

3. Kneed dough on a lightly floured surface for 3-4 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Divide the dough into equl size balls (depending on what pizza you’re doing; divide into 2 for 30-cm sized pizzas)

4. Place on a lightly floured tray under a clean, damp cloth and set aside in a warm place for 30 minutes or until the balls have doubled in size. Press eash dough ball into a round and roll out on a lightly floured surface to desired size.

So once you got the pizza base, it’s very easy to make the pizza! Basically just put in whatever you want. Most of the time, it’s either a tomato or pesto based sauce. Just most, not all. I made a total of 3 pizzas, 2 savoury and 1 dessert. This one here is a bacon, cherry tomato and basil pizza with pesto sauce.

Bacon, Cherry Tomato, Basil and Egg Pizza

1 quantity basic pizza dough

olive oil for brushing

1/3 cup pesto

1 cup shredded mozzarella / cheddar cheese

handful cherry tomatoes

1/2 cup basil leaves, torn

as much streaky bacon as you want. No I mean like, 5-6 pieces

1 egg

sea salt and black pepper

Again, these are just rough measurements as pizza is just like …. sandwich ? You put in whatever you like at a reasonable amount.

Preheat oven to 220 C. Prepare 1 quantity basic pizza dough. Place 2 trays in the oven to heat for 5-10 minutes.

Divide dough into 4 balls (Depends on how many flavours of pizzas you want to make) and roll out on a lightly floured surface to 22cm rounds. Brush trays with oil and top with the dough. Top the bases with pesto, cheese, bacon, cherry tomatoes, salt and pepper and drizzle with extra olive oil. Bake for 15 minutes. Crack egg on top of the pizza and let bake for another further 3-5 minutes until topping is golden and the base is crispy. Top with fresh basil leaves to serve.

Have fun and be creative in the pizza toppings. 😉

I made using 1/3 of the dough for this pizza. It was nice to have a change in the pizza base considering we’ve been eating tomato based pizzas all these while. Cherry tomatoes are great on pizzas, cause when you bake them, their skin turn wrinkly and the inner flesh is so juicy and flavourful!