My sister, Hope, is a junior in college and will be living in a house next year with NO MEAL PLAN! I remember being in her shoes and being so nervous thinking, “What the hell am I going to eat!?” She has the same fears and wants to learn some easy meals to make next year.
The Cooking with Hope series will feature meals we make together over the next few weeks until she leaves for school. The first meal is homemade pizza!
We made two pizza pies – the first is your basic Margherita pizza and the second was a pesto pizza with spicy chicken sausage and sun dried tomatoes. We experimented cooking the two pizzas by preheating one pizza stone, but not the other. And let me tell you, BIG mistake not preheating both of them. The preheated stone gave the dough a nice crispy crust! Once both pizzas were prepared, we cooked them together.
Margherita Pizza
Ingredients
- Pizza dough
- Pizza sauce
- Sliced fresh mozzarella
- Handful fresh basil
Steps
- Roll dough on cookie sheet or pizza stone
- Spread pizza sauce on dough, top with fresh mozzarella
- Bake at 475 for 15 minutes (for the Margherita pizza, we didn’t preheat the cookie sheet)
- Slice basil and top on pizza once it’s done cooking
Pesto Pizza with Spicy Chicken Sausage and Sun Dried Tomatoes
Ingredients
- Pizza dough
- Pesto, click here for recipe
- Olive oil
- 2 Spicy chicken sausages, sliced thin
- Sun dried tomatoes
- Shredded mozzarella cheese
Steps
- Preheat oven to 350 and heat pizza stone for 15-30 minutes. I only preheated it for 15 minutes because I was too hungry to wait the full time, but it will make the dough even more crunchy!
- While the pizza stone is heating, drizzle some oil olive in a frying pan. Saute the chicken sausage until no longer pink in the middle. I used only two pieces and froze the rest.
- After 15-30 minutes take out the pizza stone and carefully spread your dough out. Remember it’s hot! Turn oven up to 475 degrees
- Spread a layer of pesto. Add your shredded cheese, then top with chicken sausage and sun dried tomatoes. Cook both pizzas together for 15 minutes or until the crust is turning brown.
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