Phyllo Pastry Pizza

[Phyllo Pastry Pizza with Homemade Pesto]

The problem with purchasing phyllo dough for a recipe is, I always end up with alot of leftover sheets.  After last week's wonderful strudel recipe, I had more than half a box of dough left.  I also had to come up with a quick supper menu.  I looked around my pantry for leads.  I had pine nuts leftover from my pesto risotto recipe, the garden was still flourishing in this late September heat with basil and tomatoes and I had recently purchased a fresh bottle of extra virgin olive oil.  Okay, so I could make pesto again.  I suddenly remembered an old recipe I had made a year or two ago from a seasonal show on Food TV Canada called Summer's Best.  It's not my favourite program but one episode I happened to catch had a great recipe for phyllo pastry pizza.  This time I made my pesto as follows:

As much basil as I could hold in one hand from the garden, flavours included licorice, sweet and cinnamon.

Pesto

1/4 cup pine nuts
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

I placed the basil in my food processor, shook things up a bit then added the garlic, 1/3 of the pine nuts and an equal amount of Parmesan cheese.  I whirred it up once more then added some of the olive oil.  Once this was blended I continued with the second batch of pine nuts, Parmesan and another splash of oil.  I mixed these together and repeated once more until it came together in a fine pesto paste. 

The Summer's Best Phyllo Pastry Pizza recipe went something like this (in my own words and I added a few thing that I found to be beneficial):

7 sheets phyllo dough
3/4 cup butter, melted
Parmesan cheese
1 large ripe tomato, sliced thinly
8-10 rounded slices provolone cheese, halved
whole basil leaves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Apply some of the butter with a pastry brush to a large baking sheet.  Transfer one sheet of phyllo dough to the cookie sheet, keep the remaining sheets under a damp towel to avoid dry out.

Apply butter to phyllo dough with pastry brush and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.  Repeat this action with the remaining 6 sheets. 

Spread pesto evenly across the dough.  Add sliced provolone cheese top with sliced tomato and whole basil leaves. 

Bake for 30 minutes.  Stop to appreciate the aroma wafting through your kitchen.  Let cool if you can and cut into square or rectangular pieces.  This is as quick and easy as it gets and I still have phyllo dough leftover!

Comments

[pizza]

i have never tried this before. Thank you for sharing your recipe

[Joyce]

I was searching for recipe to try and duplicate Taco Bell's Mexican Pizza (crispy/flaky crust) and thought phyllo dough might work. Thanks for confirming it. Will try your recipe; sounds delicious!

[Ruth]

What a great idea!!!

[Sara]

Wow, that looks tasty.

[Joe @ Culinary in the Desert]

I've never used Phyllo in a pizza but this is a great idea! Looks incredible.

[tanvi]

looks great! im enjoying reading your blog :-)