When I was in France, my favorite thing to eat was frozen margherita pizza. Ok maybe not my favorite thing, but let's say this was a thing that I enjoyed eating because it was delicious and only cost 1 euro. I've been craving it since being home, and now that we have a large basil plant in our backyard I finally got my wish.
Here is how we recreated this lovely dish:
First: Pizza Dough
We use this recipe given to us by our neighbor who is famous in our family for being an awesome cook. Whenever I'm at this neighbor's house, she always offers me food, so I find excuses to go there all the time. Believe me, you can trust this recipe!
Second: Sauce
For the sauce, we first lightly coated the pizza dough with olive oil. Make sure to get the oil over the entire crust and especially to the edges of the pizza where the sauce won't be. On top of the oil, put pesto sauce. I was introduced to this stuff by a friend that I lived with in France who is Italian. She did not skimp on her pesto sauce when she was making meals, and you shouldn't either!!! Slather it on there! This big jar of it from Costco was perfect!
Third: Tomatoes and Cheese
We just used one Roma tomato for this pizza. You could use more if you like. We just have some people in our family who told me that they were just going to pick them off, so I went easy on the tomatoes.
For the cheese, we used fresh mozzarella. Any brand will do, but we used the Italian brand, Bel Gioioso. Just break it off with your fingers, and put it in large clumps all over your pizza.
Fourth: Bake and Basil
Bake according to the instructions on the recipe. When you pull it out of the oven, let it cool for a couple of minutes and then put on the fresh basil leaves. The first time I tried it, I put the basil leaves on before it cooked, and they came out all shriveled and burned and not tasty! So remember: bake, then basil!!
Fifth: Eat
Here is our finished product!
Yours will look just as lovely, I promise!!!
Now get to baking!!
