Pesto Nut Bruschetta and Pizza

Remember that Garlic and Basil Pesto I made not that long ago? I mentioned that the next HBin5 bread assignment called for it, right?

YUM!!

Oh...in regards to the HBin5 Bread Braid....you can join any time. You don't even have to have a blog....you can just join to gain the knowledge and the knowhow and tap into the great wealth of information from the great bread minds that are involved. Not to mention the great leadership and organization from our fearless leader, Michelle over at Big Black Dogs.

Ok, now back to that pesto....well, it is the star ingredient of the dough for this part of the assignment and instead of making a loaf of bread....I made pizza and bruschetta

YUM!

Here's a picture of the ingredients

I can't tell ya how much or what to do with it. You'll have to buy the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes A Day Cookbook in order to find out.

The only think I did differently was to cut the whole wheat flour in half and replace it with all purpose flour. It seems to agree with my taste buds a lot more that way. Oh...and the whole wheat flour that I use? It's white whole wheat flour....same nutrients as regular whole wheat, only it's made with the lighter colored grains. Oh...and for the pine nuts....I toasted them first. And I didn't measure the pine nuts or the pesto...but I'm sure I added more than the recipe specified. In my book, thats not a bad thing.

Have I mentioned that the authors Jeff Hertzbert and Zoe Francois have a blog too? Oops...so sorry. I should have. You can see a lot of their recipes and tips and instructions over at Artisan Bread in Five

Ok...so I mixed the dough and fell in love instantly...I mean...the aroma. The color.....the anticipation..

yep...it had me on the first rise

After it sat on the counter for 2 hrs, I let it sit in the fridge for a while before I started playing with it. I decided to make pizza first. And then I remembered something awesome that Bob over at Cooking Stuff did....

CHEESE STUFFED PIZZA CRUST.....YUM!!!

So I cut some cheese into sticks and filled the crust, then loaded it with some goodies, like...garlic alfredo sauce, chicken, mushrooms, slivered garlic, red onions, chopped fresh basil, spinach, goat cheese, mozzarella cheese and a little jack cheese (cuz I ran out of mozzarella)

Let's just say.....this pizza was AMAZING!!!

The dough was great to work with....the aroma was enough to put your senses into a state of food coma anticipation, and the flavor.....pure heaven.

The best part? Well....let me tell ya....

I still had some dough left. So the next night I decided

BAGUETTE TIME!! 

Have I said YUM!!! yet?

I had made a "not so Italian, more Sandra Lee-ish" version of Chicken Cacciatori that I prefer not to share here as it was....mmm....not my choice.

But

With this lovely Pesto Baguette, I made my first ever bruschetta.

I'm soooo in looOOOOooove!

I melted some butter and olive oil with some sliced up garlic and let that all cook until the garlic was starting to get brown but the butter wasn't burning.

Fine line there.

I brushed the baguette slices with the garlic butter and let them toast in the oven then sprinkled a little mozzarella cheese on each one and let that melt.

I chopped up some tomato, onion and basil....drizzled with a tad of olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper.

And topped each toasted slice with the tomato mixture

Let me just repeat myself.....again.......YUM!!

And you know what? I still have some dough left. And rather than making something new...I'm going to repeat the bruschetta. The whole combo totally rocked! Even Sir Sportsalot had a remark...

"....."Those" were really good!" (from the mouths of men)