Making a homemade pizza doesn’t have to be daunting; especially when you can use quality, short-cut ingredients like store-bought pizza dough, your favorite store-bought pesto, and jarred roasted red peppers. On the other hand, if you have the time, you could also make all three of those ingredients yourself. Dealer’s choice.
The combination of Italian flavors here is simply lovely: the sweet flavor of the roasted red peppers pairs very well with the saltiness of the basil pesto; the fennel seeds in the Italian chicken sausage is a nice addition as well. For added color and nutrients I decided to also include some blanched kale to the pizza, along with torn fresh mozzarella cheese which you can tell by the picture, melts beautifully over top of all the luscious Italian ingredients.
(To view this recipe, click on the blue title of the blog post above*)
Chicken Sausage, Kale & Pesto Pizza with Roasted Red Peppers
Ingredients:
- 1 lb. ball of store-bought (or homemade) pizza dough, rolled out onto a round pizza pan that has been sprayed with olive oil spray, or fitted with a parchment round
- 1/4 cup store-bought (or homemade) pesto sauce
- 3/4 lb. chicken Italian sausage, cooked and crumbled
- 1 head of kale, stems removed, leaves chopped into bite-sized pieces, blanched
- 4 oz. ball of fresh mozzarella cheese
- (1) jar of store-bought roasted red peppers (sliced)—or 1 roasted red pepper that you roasted yourself
- 1/4 cup grated Pecorino or Parmesan cheese
- Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
- drizzle of quality olive oil
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
- Once you have rolled your pizza dough out to fit your pizza pan, spread the pesto sauce in an even layer over the dough–leaving a 1 1/2-inch border.
- Next, spread the cooked sausage crumbles over the pizza, along with the chopped, wilted kale leaves.
- Tear the fresh mozzarella cheese and scatter on top of those ingredients; followed by the sliced, roasted red pepper pieces.
- Sprinkle the top of the pizza with crushed red pepper flakes and the grated cheese. Place the pizza in the preheated oven and cook for 20-25 minutes, or until the crust is browned and puffed, and the cheese melted.
- Allow the pizza to rest for 5 minutes outside of the oven before slicing and enjoying.
Tagged: chicken sausage, crushed red pepper flakes, fresh mozzarella cheese, Italian sausage, kale, mozzarella cheese, pesto, pesto sauce, pizza, pizza with sausage and kale, roasted red peppers, sausage pizza
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