Chicken Pesto Pizza

This is one of my favorite meals to make when I don't have much time. Its yummy and fast and healthy to boot! It is based off of this recipe on Allrecipes.com, except I added sliced tomatoes, Italian seasoning, and mozzarella.


What I like to do is buy the family packs of chicken breast while they are on sale. I bake half for dinner that night and the other half I bake so that I can shred it up to use throughout the week.

Ingredients:
pizza dough; pre-made or not its up to you
package of Pesto mix
Italian Seasoning (optional)
shredded cheese of your choice
1 large tomato (sliced)
1 jar of artichoke hearts (drained)
2-3 boneless chicken breast shredded
1/4 cup of water

First prepare the pesto sauce. You won't need the whole package, not even half the package. I use about 1/4 the amount of mix and use the rest for *veggie dip. Combine with water and a dab of olive oil...about 1 tbsp in a saucepan until heated through.

Next, arrange pizza dough on parchment paper on a baking sheet. Once the pesto is mixed and heated through, brush on pizza dough, make sure the pesto mixture is not too watery. Next layer on shredded chicken, artichoke hearts, and sliced tomatoes. (In my pic my artichokes are pictured on top, thats only bc I forgot to add them sooner hah. Make sure you layer them under everything, they are less likely to fall off the pizza that way.) Sprinkle with Italian Seasoning. Top of with shredded cheese. I used mozzarella. Since the chicken is already cooked you are just popping it into the oven to bake the dough and melt the cheese. Follow the directions on the dough packaging for cook time. If using a premade dough, bake until cheese has melted. Also, make sure not to overcook the chicken or it will dry out. And that's it! Happy eating!


*Veggie Dip recipe:
combine remaining pesto mix with 1 cup mayo and 1 cup sour cream, mix and refrigerate.

Adventures in Breadmaking

This week I decided I would try my hand at baking my own bread. Bread consumption in our household varies from week to week. Some weeks we fly through a loaf, other weeks it gets forgotten until its just a loaf of green mold. This week however we went through it quite quickly. I had bought some yeast beforehand knowing I wanted to try homemade bread sometime. So I figure this is a better time than ever.

I used this No-Knead Bread recipe I found online. I don't have a bread maker so I wanted to find the simplest bread making recipe I could. I didn't have any bread flour on hand, but after a quick check on yahoo answers, I learned that regular all-purpose flour would be okay. It will taste the same, just a bit more dense. I mixed the ingredients and tucked it away overnight. The recipe says you can wait as little as four hours, but I did this right before bed.

The next day, you could tell the yeast was doing its thing, but it seemed rather wet to me still and against my better judgement I dumped it on the counter top thinking it would be okay to start kneading it. Man on man was I wrong. It was way more liguidy (making up my own words) than I thought and it ran all over the counter top. So Carmen helped me thrown LOADS of flour in it until it thickened up. Also, it smelled kind of funny while baking. I was looking forward to the smells of fresh bread baking, but it unfortunately had a fishy type smell? I have no idea how that worked out or why my dough was extra runny...either way it ended up looking and more importantly tasting fine :)

Its more of a rustic type bread, very crunchy and crispy outside. I would think it would go nice as dinner bread to have with steak or pasta. I was honestly looking for a recipe that would be more so for a regular loaf of bread that we could cut up and use for sandwiches. As I said, despite some minor setbacks, it was still edible. I guess I'll keep practicing and keep my eye out for a more loaf-like bread recipe. If you all know of any, please pass them on!