Celebrate fresh vegetables, herbs, and bright flavor in this Summer Vegetable and Pesto Pizza! A chewy crust, creamy white sauce, mozzarella cheese, and fresh toppings make this pizza a star for your family dinner or even to serve to guests! 

THE INGREDIENTS: 

THE DOUGH: 

Water: To make any sort of dough, you need both dry and wet ingredients! Water is what is traditionally used for pizza dough, and why change a tried and true? We do not recommend increasing or decreasing the amount of water in this recipe as it will affect the texture. However, if you must because the dough is too dry, carefully add 1 tablespoon of water at a time until the dough is no longer crumbly. A little bit of water goes further than you think! 

Quick Yeast: Yeast is a leavening agent that makes our bread both feel and taste the way we love. Quick yeast is a must for this recipe if you want to have a properly risen pizza dough in the time frame we have stated. Only have regular yeast on hand? Two options: increase the rising time by roughly 30 minutes OR add extra yeast (a half packet or ⅛ oz). If going the “extra yeast” route, be aware that you might have a “yeasty” flavor to your dough. However, it is still delicious! You cannot replace the yeast in this recipe with other leavening agents (baking soda, baking powder)…yeast is truly one of a kind, sorry! If you make this replacement, you’re risking a culinary flop. 

Sugar: Sugar? In my pizza? Yes! Yeast is actually a microbe and, like any living organism, needs a snack to keep itself going and growing. 2 teaspoons does not add sweetness to the dough, but is important to get the rise we want. Do not leave it out, please! In a pinch, replace it with honey so the yeast still has something to munch on. 

Salt: Nobody likes bland food (or at least not us), so salt to the rescue! Don’t worry, this meal is not too salty! Don’t let that steer you away from including the salt in the dough-it really helps bring the pizza together.  

Bread Flour: Although bread flour looks the same as all purpose flour, it has different concentrations! Bread flour is a blend with more protein in it than regular all purpose flour. Since more protein is present, that means more gluten is present, too! Bread flour is our secret to better rising and chewy pizza crust. You can replace the bread flour with all purpose flour and still get a nice pizza dough, but it would be best to use bread flour. 

THE SAUCE: 

Yellow Onion: You may be used to pizza made with red (tomato) sauce, but white sauce is in town for this one! However, one thing both of these pizza sauces have in common is onion. An onion is a simple, classic, yet oh so tasty flavor that we do not want to omit in this recipe!

If you do not have an onion on hand, we recommend replacing it with either 2 teaspoons of onion powder or 2 tablespoons of dried minced onion. Add the onion powder with both the salt and freshly cracked black pepper. If using dried minced onion, add it with the butter and toast it for a minute or until fragrant. If you want, other substitutes include other kinds of onion and shallot. Although red onions may be a common pantry staple at your house, they are the only kind of onion we do not recommend substituting due to their different flavor. 

Butter: One thing white sauces often don’t skimp on is fat, and this white pizza sauce is no exception! Butter not only highlights the flavor of (and softens) our onion and garlic, but it is a key component when making a roux. What is a roux? A roux is made of equal parts of flour and butter. A roux thickens a sauce. You can’t just add flour to the cream because it would create clumps. By mixing the flour into this butter, even though some is lost in cooking the onion and garlic, we get a smooth yet thick sauce-perfect for pizza! 

Garlic Cloves: What kind of white sauce is missing garlic? Not this one! We prefer using fresh garlic in recipes that have fewer ingredients because it has a stronger presence than garlic powder. When we say three garlic cloves, we mean 3 medium to large garlic cloves. Adjust this garlic to your preference. After all, some like less and some like more-you know best! If you don’t have fresh garlic on hand, don’t worry, using ¾ tsp of garlic powder still is an acceptable substitute. Add it when adding the other spices, such as the salt and black pepper. 

Freshly Cracked Black Pepper: When you think of a good alfredo sauce, which this white pizza sauce is mimicking, you probably imagine the zing of black pepper breaking up the monotony of the rich cream. At least, that is what is important to us! Black pepper may be an automatic seasoning in many recipes, but this is one place where black pepper must be the star. Once you have tried freshly cracked black pepper, you realize pre-ground black pepper does not even come close in comparison. So, although you can replace this with ½ tsp to ¾ tsp (your preference) ground black pepper, reach for the grinder if you have one. As you know your black pepper tolerance best, add until you are happy. However, if you are really unsure, most will probably find the ½ to ¾ tsp range as where they want to be. 

Salt: Salt is so basic, but we would probably find our taste buds falling flat without it. Feel free to adjust the salt to your preference, but we believe most will be happy with the amount that we have stated. 

All-Purpose Flour: Here it is! The other half of our roux. Flour is what helps our sauce thicken. How does that work, you ask? Well, flour is one reason why our sauce thickens, but the other needed components are heat and time. If you believe your sauce will be on the heat for a while, then you might want to reduce the flour to 1 tablespoon, for example.  If you do not have flour on hand, we recommend a slurry for such emergencies. What is a slurry? Simply add 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with roughly 2 tablespoons of water to form a paste. Add it with the cream and cook on medium heat until the sauce is at the thickness that you desire. 

Cream: Cream has lots of fat and is naturally thicker than the milk you might have in the refrigerator. What fat brings to our sauce is richness, giving us that decadent feeling we love while eating this summer vegetable and pesto pizza. Don’t have cream on hand? That’s ok. Good substitutes for white/alfredo sauce include half and half, whole milk, or even low-fat milk if that is all you have. To accommodate for not having cream, however, be prepared to have your sauce on the heat longer. It will need a little bit more time to thicken up. 

THE PESTO: 

Basil: Pesto and basil go hand-in-hand. In fact, it is the predominant flavor of our-if not every-pesto recipe. Although we use a mixture of basil and parsley, feel free to use all basil in this pesto recipe. Just replace the parsley with basil 1:1. When we say 1 cup of fresh basil, it is also the same thing as one of those 0.8 ounce containers of basil you can buy at the grocery store. So, if you use those, use the whole thing! 

Parsley: Parsley may not be the most traditional ingredient, but it has found itself in many pesto recipes, including ours! It’s light and fresh. It helps to make a pesto that you can eat in large quantities, instead of just being able to have a little dab before it just feels way too strong. Again, if you’d rather not use parsley, just replace this 1:1 with more basil. This is a great recipe for using up leftover parsley, as those fresh bunches you can buy without any packaging at many grocery stores often have more than 1 cup of parsley to them. 

Sunflower Kernels: Well, these aren’t pine nuts, that’s for sure. However, pine nuts are often quite expensive or even hard to find. When we made pesto with pine nuts, we found they didn’t leave any flavor that made them worthy of buying just for one recipe. However, pine nuts do thicken pesto quite well. So, we learned more about sauces, and found other nuts and seeds can thicken up other sauces just as well. 

If you don’t have sunflower kernels or pine nuts on hand, feel free to reach for just about any nut or seed you have. With that being said, make sure you are using nuts/seeds that are shelled (no shells). Sunflower kernels, for example, are just sunflower seeds with the shell taken off. In addition to that, think of the flavor of each nut. Peanuts will leave a bit of their flavor impact on the pesto, for example. Cashews or almonds, which have a bit lighter of a flavor, will replicate pine nuts a bit more closely. If you don’t mind buying sunflower kernels, just know they also make a wonderful addition to muffins and granolas! 

Salt: We don’t want our pesto to fall flat, do we? A little bit of salt livens everything up without making you desperate to reach for a glass of water. You know your tastes best, so increase or decrease the salt to your own tastes. 

Black Pepper: Black pepper adds a bit of sharpness to our pesto, but the amount is entirely customizable. We recommend not being too heavy handed, as this is not a flavor you want in the forefront-we want the herbs to be the stars! Increase or decrease this black pepper to your own desires, and feel free to use either ground or freshly cracked. We are partial to freshly cracked, but any black pepper works here. 

Garlic Cloves: Pesto was originally made in Italy. What does Italy make you think of? Can we guess you just thought of the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Perhaps even pizza? Our summer vegetable and pesto pizza may not have been the pizza that came to mind, but trust us, it’s worth it to stay on track here! Sincerely, though, you probably also thought about garlic. You’d be spot on with that, as pesto also traditionally is made with garlic cloves crushed right in! We use 1-2 cloves for a slight, but not strong, garlic flavor in our pesto. Increase or decrease as desired. 

Olive Oil (+ Where Is The Parmesan?): We have two moods: minimize oil as much as possible or dump like a whole cup straight into the pot and get cooking! When we were making this recipe, we really wanted to find the minimum amount of oil for this recipe. We added 1-2 tablespoons at a time until we hit 8 tablespoons, aka a half cup. We really couldn’t get a successful pesto with less than that. Otherwise, it was more like an herb paste instead of a sauce. If you want to reduce the oil, you’ll have to reduce the sunflower kernels. Be aware, then, that you’ll have a smaller amount of pesto than we make here! 

Also, we use sunflower kernels to thicken our pesto and replace the pine nuts. That leaves the question: but why isn’t parmesan thickening this pesto recipe? Personally, we just like our pesto without. We like cheese, we really do, but we’re not of those who think cheese just makes everything better. In our fridge, we really stick to minimal cheeses and don’t frequently have parmesan on hand-and you all can guess how much we like cooking with what we have! As a bonus, if you’re vegan, this recipe is already all adjusted for you!

THE TOPPINGS: 

Mozzarella Cheese: Can a pizza even be a pizza without cheese? We’re not sure and don’t want to find out, so mozzarella to the rescue for this recipe! Pizza is all about a dough, a sauce, some cheese, and some extra toppings. Mozzarella is the classic pizza cheese that you probably think of, and we didn’t want to deviate from a classic (especially since we’re already having some not-so-classic extra toppings). We wouldn’t argue that our summer vegetable and pesto pizza is an old classic!

Pesto: This pizza would not be complete without this herby sauce! Pesto is a basil-focused sauce that tastes delicious and helps our pizza from being too monotonous and rich. You can use store bought pesto or our homemade recipe mentioned above. You’ll want to use at least 1/4 cup of pesto in this recipe, but we’ve also put up to 3/4 of a cup of pesto on this pizza! After all, it is a summer vegetable and PESTO pizza. It just depends on how much you like. If you’re going for the less pesto route, just know the extra dresses a pretty awesome pesto pasta salad.

Cherry Tomatoes: There’s just something special about biting into a juicy cherry tomato. Since we went for white sauce instead of tomato sauce in this recipe, we knew we still wanted to add a little bit of that classic vegetable (or fruit…) to really tie this pizza together. If you don’t have cherry tomatoes on hand, feel free to reach for diced or sliced whole tomatoes, roma tomatoes, or any variety. If tomatoes aren’t your thing, try replacing this with sliced or diced bell peppers! Red, yellow, and orange bell peppers are sweeter than their green counterparts, so keep that in mind when choosing the best vegetable for your pizza. We like our summer vegetable and pesto pizza to be on the sweeter side, if you’re having trouble deciding.  

Corn: Here’s our odd ingredient-but trust us! Corn is sweet and fresh, it doesn’t just have to be reserved for the grill. When we first made this pizza recipe, we opted for frozen corn. Talk about easy, after all. However, it was a bit of a let down. The corn covered the pizza entirely. Yet, when we took a bite, we felt the corn was soft and completely lost in the pizza. So, it is really important to use fresh corn for this recipe. If you don’t have corn on hand, reach for some yellow summer squash or zucchini. They’re also a “different” kind of topping, summery, and taste delicious with this sauce and cheese! 

Goat Cheese: Even without the goat cheese, you’ll be satisfied with this summer vegetable and pesto pizza recipe. In fact, we probably eat it more without goat cheese than with it! It’s just all about what we have in our fridge at the moment. However, goat cheese really does take pizza up a notch. Unlike mozzarella cheese, goat cheese does not melt well. Instead, it remains as gooey “bubbles” of cheese that make it a third topping that pairs well with the vegetables. The richness of the cheese makes up for how light the vegetable toppings may seem. If you don’t have it, you can omit it. On the other hand, you could also use feta or parmesan instead for a two-cheese pizza. 

KEY INFORMATION: 

How Do You Make a Good Rising Environment for Your Dough? If it is too cold inside your house, you may find that your dough does not rise as much as you want. To make up for this, we recommend turning your oven to the temperature you will need later for the recipe (425 F / 220 C). Once your dough is ready to rise, set it on top of the (turned-off) stovetop above your oven. The heat will rise and make a nice environment for your dough! 

Why Pre-Bake Pizza Crust? Flip flop. A common term for a shoe that you do not want to be a common term for your pizza. If a pizza crust isn’t strong enough, it falls over when you pick it up and your toppings slide onto your plate. By pre-baking your crust, you are giving it a little strength before you add the wet sauce and heavy toppings on top. Otherwise, you have all of that weight and wetness going onto a still-wet and flimsy piece of dough. 

How to Best Top a Pizza So the Toppings are Visible: When we first started making pizza, we thought it was simple: sauce, toppings, cheese. Imagine our dismay when our pizzas all looked like cheese pizzas instead of the nice pizzas you might see at a restaurant. To have a pretty pizza worthy of a dinner party, we recommend: sauce, 75% of your cheese, the toppings, 25% of your cheese. You’re welcome! 

Why Can’t You Bake Pesto? If you add your pesto to the pizza before baking it, you will be a bit disappointed. When exposed to high heat, pesto blackens, making for a visually unappealing slice of pizza. Also, the more you cook fresh herbs, the more they lose their flavor! And what is pesto but a fresh herb sauce? 

What Goes With Summer Vegetable and Pesto Pizza? Personally, we like to eat our pizza with a side salad. If you’re looking for sides that are even more summery and fresh, try out some freshly sliced vegetables (like bell peppers or extra cherry tomatoes) with whatever dipping sauce you want. In fact, that would be a great use of any leftover pesto!