Homemade pizza is a tasty and easy week night family meal. You can use leftovers to make your own creations or recreate some of your favorites from a restaurant. My personal favorite is a flavor combination that I copied from a local pizza restaurant that went out of business several years ago. I was sad to see them go but after a little bit of experimenting I was able to recreate my favorite at home using a pesto base topped with chicken, pine nuts, and feta cheese.

I love using leftover grilled chicken as a pizza topping because I very rarely have enough leftovers to make a full meal. I’ve tried cooking more – but my kids just eat it. Usually I end up with 1-2 grilled chicken breasts left over but that’s more than enough to top a pizza with.

Ingredients

Pizza Dough – store bought or homemade

Pesto sauce – store bought or homemade

Grilled chicken – This can be seasoned in any way. We used leftover grilled chicken that was marinated in italian dressing

Feta cheese

Nuts – Pine nuts are my favorite. I was out so I used walnuts and those were tasty too

Preparation

Prepare your pizza crust by either making pizza dough from scratch or rolling out store bought dough on a pizza stone. If you have a great local pizzaria nearby, they will often sell their dough for you to make your own pizza at home. If you don’t have a pizza stone, you can spread your dough out on baking sheet (rectangular or circular). Poke your pizza dough with a fork several times to prevent bubbling in the crust.

I like to bake the crust on it’s own for about 5 minutes to be sure that it won’t be doughy in the middle. If you are using store bought dough, follow the instructions on the package.

Spread a thin layer of pesto on the pizza dough, leaving about an inch around the edge as a crust. Be sure and spread the pesto evenly and remember that  a little goes a long way.

My kids are strange and they tend to pick off pizza toppings, even if they are things they would normally eat without complaint. To avoid having to bribe, fight, and plead with them to eat, I put most of the toppings on below the cheese where they can’t see them. This works especially well with things they don’t think they like even though they eat them without complaint when they don’t know they are there – like nuts. I saved about 1/3 of the chicken to put above the cheese but all the nuts went below and my kids ate them without saying a word.

Sprinkle cheese on the top, gradually putting down a thinner layer as you work your way towards the edge of the pizza to avoid cheese melting over (not that there’s anything wrong with gooey cheese. As far as I’m concerned, you can never have enough cheese).

Add the remaining toppings to the top of the pizza, including the feta cheese and toppings that your kids will still even if they can see them. The feta cheese adds such great flavor to this pizza, but of course, I could pretty much put feta on anything.

Put the pizza in a 400 degree oven for about 6-7 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when the cheese is melted and the pizza crust lifts away from the pizza stone without sticking.