Cast Iron Skillet Pesto Pizza

Introducing the best pizza I’ve had in YEARS.

Oh MAN does this pizza impress. This was a group effort the other night – my brother-in-law, sister, and I all worked on getting this pizza together. We fought with it, we had a serious setback, we had delays. But an hour and a half later when I took my first bite, it was all totally worth it. (Unless you have to take care of a toddler, find huge chunks of mold in a usually-mold-proof vegan cheese, and wind up having to scrape toppings off a layer of pesto, this will be a lot easier for you than it was for us 😉 )

So the other night I was at my sister’s house, and before she got home my brother-in-law and I were talking about what we might want for dinner. He mentioned wanting to grab some leaves from his new basil plant and make a batch of pesto. I asked for pizza. He said my sister has an awesome crust recipe she’s been making that is really easy to throw together and we could have her do that when she got home. So off to the store I went for the rest of our toppings. Brother-in-law set to making homemade pesto with freshly picked basil leaves. We set my sister to making her super easy crust that is to DIE for.

We got everything set up pretty quickly, but as I’m sprinkling Daiya shreds over the first pizza, my sister and I thought we saw some green-ish spots. I didn’t worry because I’ve been a big Daiya user for a long time now and never had a problem. So I sprinkle cheese over the pesto, throw on a bunch of toppings, and then go to sprinkle just a little extra cheese on top, and pull out a couple GIANT chunks of mold!!!!!

Craziness.

After a few minutes of confusion and upset, we sent the brother-in-law back to the store while Celia and I set to carefully picking toppings off and scraping cheese out of our pesto (while my niece started to get fussy and demanded love and attention and bedtime prep.) Bleh.

But finally we got it done, Joel (BIL) returned with Vegan Gourmet’s mold-free mozzarella cheese, and we got those damn pizzas in the oven. I was starving and probably checked on them 9 times in the 12 minutes it took them to bake.

Seriously worth every single issue.

Oh, and that Vegan Gourmet cheese was fantastic! I thought I tried it once when I first turned vegan and wasn’t impressed, but either they’ve changed things since then or I tried a different brand. This stuff was great.

So here’s how you make a pizza:

cast iron skillet pesto pizza:

serves 6
1 pizza dough (we used this recipe, and my sis subbed 1 C of whole wheat flour)
1/4 C vegan pesto
1 red bell pepper, sliced
1 small onion, sliced and sautéed in 1 T Earth Balance on low heat for 20 minutes
6 slices vegan salami, thinly sliced
6 button mushrooms, thinly sliced
2 C vegan mozzarella shreds
highly recommended: red pepper flakes on top after baked!
2 T Earth Balance for greasing your skillet(s)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Get your skillet ready. My sister used two smaller 8-inch skillets and it worked great. I have a larger 12-inch cast iron skillet, so I’d probably just use that. Either way, your prep will be the same, but if you use two smaller skillets you’ll halve everything.

Throw Earth Balance in your skillet and put it in the preheating oven until the margarine melts. When it’s melted, pull the skillet out, swirl the margarine around all sides. Using your hands, stretch out the dough into a large circle and put it in the skillet. My sister usually doesn’t pull an edge up for the crust, but I did. Both ways turned out fantastic and are all a matter of preference. I liked that having a crust meant you got that big fluffy crust on the end, but the bottom of the pizza was thinner. Do whatever you like best!

Spread pesto evenly on the crust(s). Top pesto with 1 1/2 C cheese, layer on all your toppings, and then finish with the last 1/2 C of cheese.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until the cheese is melty and the crust is golden.

Gently lift an edge of the pizza out of the skillet so you can slide it onto a cutting board and slice.

Dig. IN.