Basil Pizza

Pesto sauce

Unfortunately, lately pesto is often made not with pine nuts, as the original recipe requires, but with walnuts, hazelnuts or even peanuts, which spoils the taste of the sauce considerably. And instead of the best olive oil, the first cold pressing, they may even add palm oil. It is hardly worth saying that pesto should contain the very best Pecorino or Parmesan. It is replaced with cheap cheeses. But any Italian from Genoa is firmly convinced that pesto must be made only in a marble mortar and only from basil grown only in Liguria. If you are ever in Liguria, be sure to praise the pesto when talking to the locals. You will instantly gain friends and even admirers. And by the way, for a Genoese, pesto has always existed, that is, forever. Don’t forget it!

1. Prepare the pesto sauce following the recipe, chopping everything fairly coarsely so that you can feel grains and pieces. Set aside 1 tbsp of grated Parmesan (50 g) to sprinkle over the pizza at the very end.

   

   Add a little more olive oil to the pesto, an extra 1 tbsp, and stir until smooth.

   

   Although it is not essential, pesto for pasta, rice and meat is made very smooth, grinding the components into a uniform paste. For pizza, a coarse grind is better: when baked, the cheese in the pesto should melt slightly rather than run. For the tastiest basil pizza you need about half a cup of pesto (100 ml), or a little more.

Dough and topping

2. Prepare the pizza dough. The pizza dough recipe we always use as a base is “Pizza dough”. Stretch the finished dough and lay it on a pizza pan greased with olive oil. Prick the dough with a fork in several places.

   

3. Spread the dough with 3 tbsp of tomato sauce made in advance. Ideally, make a small amount of tomato sauce from the flesh of 1-2 fresh tomatoes, one that suits pizza as well as almost any other dish.

   

4. Tomatoes, only the ripest, with the skin and seeds left on, cut into very thin slices and arrange over the dough. Sprinkle the pizza with dried oregano, literally 1-2 pinches.

   

5. Grate or thinly slice the mozzarella and spread it evenly over the pizza.

   

6. Add the basil pesto. If the sauce is fairly runny, you can simply spread it over the mozzarella. If it is hard to spread, just crumble it over the whole surface of the pizza.

   

7. Arrange the capers on top, distributing them evenly. Sprinkle the pizza with the Parmesan you set aside.

   

   Be sure to drizzle with olive oil, so the basil pizza is less likely to dry out.

Baking

8. Bake the basil pizza in an oven preheated to 200°C for 20 mins, until the mozzarella melts and the edge of the dough turns golden.

   

Serving

9. If you like, scatter a handful of basil leaves over the finished pizza: fresh leaves are added after baking. Cut the pizza into 6-8 pieces with a pizza cutter; it is convenient to do this on a wooden board.

   

10. Put the cheese pizza with basil on plates, or, if you serve it at a festive table, you can serve it right on the wooden board.

    

    Serve basil pizza hot only!