Pesto Chicken Pizza Recipe

Pesto Chicken Pizza Recipe

Pesto Chicken Pizza is the ideal easy meal with a delicious flavour for classic comfort food that everyone loves. Even better everyone can add their own favourite toppings to complement the pesto and chicken and whether you want to make classic pizza dough, store-bought or even a keto pizza dough you can do any or all of the above. For us pizza is comfort food, it makes me think of being cozy, becoming one with the couch in my pjs while having a slice of my pizza. 

Disclosure: I am participating in the Chicken Farmers of Canada campaign managed by SJ Consulting. I received compensation in exchange for my participation in this campaign. The opinions on Powered by Mom are my own.

Make sure to check out our tips to have the best pesto chicken pizza you can! Pssst, we’re also sharing a fabulous Twitter party with $1000 in prizes, make sure to read to the bottom of this post after the recipe. 

To make this Pesto Chicken Pizza in even less time, besides using store-bought pizza dough (or pre-made pizza shells) you can also use store-bought pesto. I get it we don’t always have time to make everything from scratch and while homemade is always oh so good using store-bought pre-made pesto and pizza shells you can still have one heck of a yummy dinner. Just some of the ingredients I used to make this batch of pesto chicken pizza.

When lockdown for the pandemic happened here where we live I pulled out the breadmaker that I haven’t used in years. Yes, years and I made cinnamon rolls (a lot of cinnamon rolls) and we started to make our own pizza dough via the breadmaker that does all the work for us (no kneading from me yay). We like the homemade pizza dough so much that we rarely order pizza now, we double our batch of pizza dough and use half at a time.For a thicker pizza crust I recommend adding more pesto than even what I show here. You can also add pizza sauce (marinara etc..) if you don’t want it to be dry.

Check out some of our other recipes:

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3. Chicken Taco Salad Recipe
4. Easy Snickerdoodle Cupcake With Homemade Caramel Sauce
5. Lemon Icebox Cake – No-Bake

Individual pizzas for individual preferences

Another big reason that we love to make our own pizza dough is that we like to portion it out into individual pizzas as we all have different preferences for the toppings. My husband LOVES onions on his pizza, my daughter and I not so much. In fact, this is the first pizza besides a good ole pepperoni pizza that my daughter has liked.Our individual pizzas so we could put our own favourite toppings with the pesto chicken. Mine is the one on the far right.

Yep, she’s picky so the fact that she loves this pesto chicken pizza speaks volumes. However, she still prefers not to have a ton of toppings so for her it’s pretty much the chicken, pesto and cheese whereas hubby and I like more toppings but we each like different ones. I love mushrooms on mine, hubby doesn’t and you get the idea so we always make 3 individual pizzas and it works out perfectly. Mine is the one with the tomatoes and mushrooms, the best one and yes I’m biased. 

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Can you freeze pizza dough?

Yes, you can and we love to do that. As mentioned we make our pizza dough 90% of the time now so I make extra and freeze it. I recommend coating all sides with some olive oil and vacuum seal it or a tight seal in a Ziploc bag or airtight container. I recommend portioning the dough into the pizza sizes you want and rolling them out to the shape you want too, then lightly coat with olive oil and then place the unbaked pizza crusts on a tray to freeze, once frozen transfer to the airtight containers or bags.

You can also save it with your favourite (freezer-friendly) pizza toppings, chicken and cheese freeze well along with the pesto. Some veggies get soggy but you can try with veggies but I like to add fresh veggies when I got to bake it. When you’re ready to make your frozen pizza preheat your oven to 500° F. Place the pizza on the middle rack and cook it for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbling.We’re sharing a classic pizza dough recipe and a keto pizza dough recipe from two of our favourite blogs. The pizza dough we used in the photos as mentioned earlier is a classic pizza dough but we followed our breadmakers recipe for it so for those of you without breadmakers check out this two-ingredient pizza dough from Craft Create Cook and if you prefer to have a keto pizza crust from Saving You Dinero.

What makes a good pizza?

For me what makes a good pizza, are quality ingredients for the toppings from the chicken to fresh herbs and vegetables. Even if you use store-bought pizza dough you can jazz it up by adding fresh herbs, fresh vegetables and quality chicken. I personally add some herbs such as Italian seasoning to our dough when it’s being mixed but you can sprinkle it on top of the dough too. 

If you’ve been following us for a while then you’ve heard me say this before, I also only buy chicken with the Raised by a Canadian farmer logo like the one above. I know when I buy chicken with that logo that it’s top quality, no hormones, ethical treatment of the chickens and the majority of the farms are small family-owned farms and I like to support not only Canadian businesses but family-owned small businesses are even better because we know the struggles. If your store doesn’t carry chicken with this logo ask the manager to bring it in!

Okay I’m sure you’re ready for the recipe by now right? Let’s get to it shall we?

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Yield: 3

Pesto Chicken Pizza Recipe

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Pesto Chicken Pizza is the ideal easy meal that everyone loves! Delicious flavour for classic comfort food that everyone loves. Even better everyone can add their own favourite toppings to complement the pesto and chicken and whether you want to make classic pizza dough, store-bought or even a keto pizza dough.

Prep Time 25 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 45 minutes

Ingredients

For the Pesto

• 2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Romano or Parmesan-Reggiano cheese (about 2 ounces)
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup pine nuts (can sub with almonds, walnuts, pecans or pepitas)
• 3 garlic cloves, minced (about 3 tsp)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

For the Pizza

• 1 ball of pizza dough (see our notes for pizza dough recipes & store-bought option)
• 1 1/2 cups of chicken breast
• 1 cup ricotta cheese
• 2 cups shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup Cherry tomatoes or plum tomatoes sliced (optional)
• 1/2 cup sliced fresh mushrooms (optional) I used cremini mushrooms
• Fresh basil for topping the basil
• Rosemary 1 tsp (optional)

Instructions

For the Pesto

1. Combine the basil, pine nuts (or whatever nuts you’re using), parmesan, lemon juice, garlic and salt in a food processor. You can use a blender but a food processor is best and blender gives it a different texture.
2. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Continue processing until the ingredients are well blended but still have some texture.
3. Taste, and adjust if necessary. Add a pinch of salt if the basil tastes bitter or.
4. Add more parmesan if you’d like a creamier/cheesier pesto. If you want a thinner pest you can add more.

For the pizza

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly coat a baking sheet or pizza pan with olive oil if needed. I have a Gotham Steel pan that doesn’t need oils or sprays but if yours sticks use the olive oil.
2. In a large non-stick skillet over medium heat, cook the chicken & mushrooms in a small amount of olive oil, salt & pepper to taste & the rosemary until the chicken is no longer pink and mushrooms are tender. If you like onions feel free to saute them here as well. Remove from the heat; set aside. Shred or cut chicken or you can cube or slice it before you cook. I like it shredded.
3. Roll out the dough to the size pizza you want to have or individual pizzas like we did.
4. Lightly brush olive oil on the pizza dough. This helps it from getting soggy if you're adding a lot of "moist" ingredients like tomatoes, pizza sauce etc..
5. Add pizza sauce (marinara) if using leaving a 1/2-inch border around the dough, if not using skip to the next step.
6. Spread the pesto over the surface of the dough in an even layer, leaving a 1/2-inch border around the dough.
7. Top with mozzarella, dollops of ricotta, chicken, mushrooms, tomatoes & and whatever other toppings you want, these are just my favourites. Add more cheese on top of the chicken to prevent drying of the chicken.
8. Bake at 400° for 18-20 minutes or until the crust and cheese are lightly browned.
9. Top with parmesan, dollops of more pesto (optional) and fresh basil shredded and enjoy!

Notes

Need a pizza dough recipe? Here are some that we think are great including some keto options:

Classic Pizza Dough 

Two-Ingredient Pizza Dough

Low-carb Keto Fathead Pizza Dough

Keto Pizza Recipe

Keto Pizza Chaffles

• *Cooking & prep times do not include the time to make the pesto or the pizza dough.
• You can use store-bought pesto of course but once you make your own you may never buy it again.

Toppings

• Add your favourites. We've done onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, feta cheese (one of my fave toppings) and more
• The pesto will turn your dough green and if you put pesto on your chicken and bake it the chicken will go greenish. I like to add pest on top after the pizza has been baked and then as you can see I top it with fresh basil too. No it's not too much but then I love basil and pesto.

Chicken

You can use leftover chicken of course, rotisserie chicken and even chicken thighs.

Nutrition Information:

Yield:

9

Serving Size:

1 slice
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 301Total Fat: 21gSaturated Fat: 5gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 15gCholesterol: 41mgSodium: 398mgCarbohydrates: 7gFiber: 1gSugar: 2gProtein: 22g

Please note that we can not guarantee the accuracy of the nutritional information. They are a best guess calculation.

I know it looks like a lot of steps but it’s really not, we’re just giving you options to suit your own tastes to complement the base of the pesto and the chicken. 

What kind of toppings goes with Chicken Pesto Pizza?

I can’t think of any toppings that don’t go with it. If you like a topping add it. I also didn’t use pizza sauce (marinara, tomato sauce or whatever you use) on mine but hubby did on his. I love feta cheese on my pizza so I always add feta. I did find that for thicker pizza crusts more pesto was needed and maybe some pizza sauce so it’s not dry. Depends on your other toppings, however, when we made our pesto chicken pizza one day on thin flatbread, no pizza sauce was needed, not even for hubby who loves his sauces. Play around with it and see what you like, in my opinion, you can’t have too much pesto sauce.

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If you try this recipe let us know we’d love to hear from you!