Potato Base Chicken, Pesto and Olive Pizza
Dec 9th, 2007 by Dani
My cooking mojo is curiously absent at the moment so apologies for the low level of new content. It happens from time to time. But if anyone has seen my mojo, please send it back, I hate it when cooking is a drag, I have to do too much of it to not enjoy it.
Tonight I threw together a quick pizza. I had made a batch of potato dough, based on a recipe from World Breads to make flat grilled bread for tomorrow’s lunches and thought I’d use half of it for a pizza base. I had some strips of chicken breast defrosted with no plans and some leftover mozzarella that needed using so pizza was a kind of obvious choice. I had previously considered a shredded chicken, lemon and olive salad which just sort of converted into the pizza topping.
Potato Dough Base
200g mashed potato
20g butter
225g plain flour
7g dried yeast
1 teaspoon rapadura
150ml warm milk
Mash butter into potato. Combine dry ingredients and work into potato. Add warm milk and knead for 5 - 8 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Place in a lightly piled bowl and cover. Leave for 1 hour or until doubled in size.
Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Punch dough down to knock out air. Roll out into 2 large pizza bases. I pre-cooked the bases for about 10 minutes before topping so the dough would rise nicely. If you want a flatter base, you could top and then cook all at once.
I actually made 1 large base, 1 small base and 1 smallish flat bread. To make the flat bread, I rolled the dough out to about 2 cm thick and threw it on a hot grill plate. After a couple of minutes I turned it over and cooked it for a couple of minutes more. Then I forgot to take a photo. It’s so pretty with the lovely grill lines and golden dough. I’m thinking of making more tomorrow so I’ll try and remember to take a photo then. But I digress.
Topping
1 large chicken breast
1/3 cup good quality kalamata olives, torn in half
juice 1/2 lemon
pesto
mozzarella
Poach chicken breast and thinly slice.
Coat base with pesto, top with chicken, drizzle lemon juice over chicken. Top with olives and finally top with cheese. Return to oven until cheese is melted and just starting to turn golden. Serve immediately.
