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In Season Cooking: Basil Pizza Margherita
9Jun2009 Filed under: Cooking, Recipes, gardening Author: poweredbytofu
After spotting a basil plant at Trader Joes – for the lovable price of $2.99 – homemade pizza was definitely in order. We already planted basil (from seed) in our container garden, but it has a few more months until it’s usable. My favorite recipe that uses a lot of basil is the classic Pizza Margherita. While you could just buy a pizza crust if you’re short on time, 
I love making pizza dough homemade. The smell of fresh baked dough is almost worth it alone.
Here’s a simple pizza crust recipe from Martha Stewart: Whole-Wheat Pizza Dough recipe (Note: It does require an hour to rise). After I make the dough, I freeze half of the recipe to use for pizza or stromboli (broccoli mozzarella is my current favorite) on another day. Then, roll out the other 1/2 into 2-4 mini pizzas.
Tomato Mozzarella Basil Pizza
Makes 4
Ingredients
Whole-wheat pizza dough (above)
2 medium tomatoes, sliced
8 oz mozzarella cheese
1 cup fresh basil
1 cup tomato sauce
Directions
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place pizza shells on baking sheet. Spread tomato sauce thinly over each shell; sprinkle with cheese, layer torn basil leaves over cheese, and then layer tomato slices over the basil.
- Bake until crusts are golden, 15 to 20 minutes.
What’s your favorite way to use fresh basil?
2 Responses to “In Season Cooking: Basil Pizza Margherita”
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Hey remember that time I had a quarter-life crisis, quit my job, and traveled around the world for a year? Hey remember that other time the economy tanked and I spent almost a year looking for a new job? Hey remember that time I made banana and Nutella crepes for breakfast?I probably blogged about it yeah?
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30 Before Thirty List
1.2. Visit Iceland
3. Run a half-marathon
4. Attend a cooking class
5. Carve out a stellar mini home office
6. Go raw for 1 week or do a cleanse
7. Start strength training
8. Learn to ride my bike outside with my cycling
shoes [without falling over]
9. Go to 1 new restaurant (or coffee shop) per week 52 in total
10.
11. Learn the Pincha Mayurasana yoga pose
12.
13. Go actual backpacking
14. Take a silver jewelry class
15. Road trip Hwy 101 southbound
16. Try a new class that isn't 'my style': belly dancing or zumba
17. Ask 12 people their favorite book and read it
18. Try kiteboarding
19. Volunteer again
20. Get a car, scooter or new bicycle
21. Visit a spa for a whole day or do a yoga/spa vacay
22. Eat [hyper] local for one week
23. Cook a 5-course meal, have a dinner party
24. Buy awesome matching lingerie
25. Start a grown-up alcohol collection/declare a signature drink
26. Buy a little black dress
27. Visit all 30 breweries in Portland
28. Ask a guy out
29. --- add later
30. --- add later
Susan
June 9th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
We are growing basil too! We always make pizza but I have never made my own dough, I will have to try out that recipe.
My other favorite is making pesto, but it’s hard to grow enough basil when you live in a tiny apartment.
In Season Cooking
June 28th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
[...] Martha Stewart Everyday Food recipe – from the January issue. I’d used the crust recipe for Pizza Margherita, so it was fun to try a different style of topping: arugula, shaved Pecorino Romano cheese, [...]