There’s something so special about homemade pizza. And when you make your own dough and pesto (instead of tomato sauce), it is magical. Maybe I’m being a little dramatic, but the point is that you need to make this.

I’ll start with the dough because that’s the part most people just buy from the store when they make pizza at home. This dough is named “easiest” for good reason. What makes it so easy is that once all the ingredients are mixed in the bowl, it barely requires any kneading and then it can go right on the baking sheet. Usually with pizza dough, you have to let it rise for a while, but this one works without doing that which saves a lot of time when trying to get dinner on the table.

Next, I’ll talk about the pesto. I love non-tomato sauce pizzas because they seem fancier for some reason. Other good pizza sauces would be bbq sauce, alfredo sauce or olive tapenade. This pesto was pretty simple to make. I tried to make it in a blender which was not a good idea because my blender was not strong enough. I managed to do it though by adding extra olive oil, a bit of water and scraping the sides down quite frequently. If you want to make your own pesto, I would suggest using a food processor for best results.

Equipment aside, the flavour of the pesto was delicious. I used kale instead of arugula for less bite and I really liked the almonds. I think using walnuts would also work well here. I would make this pesto alone and toss it with some pasta for a nice dinner too.

For the other toppings, I used a mozzarella and cheddar cheese combo, colourful cherry tomatoes and ricotta (not goat) cheese. The three cheeses gave so much creaminess and the tomatoes burst with sweetness. I also put some chili flakes after taking it out of the oven for a little spice.

I baked the pizza for 11 minutes and it got golden brown around the edges and the cheeses were all bubbly. The flavour was perfect, all the ingredients tasted good together, but there was one thing I should have changed. I wish I cooked the pizza longer because the bottom of the pizza (mostly in the middle) was a little doughy, I wanted it to be crispy like the crust. It still tasted delicious, but crispy all over would have made it perfect.

I will probably make this pizza again, but if not, I will for sure at least make this dough recipe. Like I said before, it really is the easiest dough and since it’s made with whole wheat flour, it’s healthy. Take pizza night to the next level with this recipe.

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Update: I only made 1 pizza, so I still had half the dough remaining. I decided to roll out the dough, brush it with olive oil and pre-bake it in the oven for a few minutes. The goal was to start cooking it so that it would be able to get more brown on the bottom once the toppings were on. I put the leftover pesto and cheese and baked it like that. After 10 minutes, it was beautiful. It got much more brown than the first pizza and the bottom was totally crispy. Yum yum.