Garlic Scape Pesto Cheesy Flatbread Pizza (Pizza Night!)

Mild garlic flavor from the garlic scape pesto, plus plenty of shredded cheeses, makes a Cheesy Garlic Scape Flatbread--a seasonal treat that can be enjoyed year round thanks to your freezer.

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I want to talk about making pizzas at home, and share a way you can keep it innovative.

Having a stash of pizza topping options in the fridge and freezer keeps our weekly pizza nights interesting.  It's super simple to throw some leftover protein (chicken, ham, ground beef--links to some of my pizza posts) onto a meat-containing pizza.

It's a breeze to add fresh vegetables (peppers, spinach, or mushrooms--more links to suggested recipes) and/or preserved vegetables for a vegetarian pizza.

I store a lot of pizza cheese in the freezer [NOT always a good idea to use in a pizza], have a vat of feta standing by, and sometimes you don't even need cheese [this would be the place where I'd link to the Beef and Broccoli Pizza if it had been posted].

It takes some time to build up that pizza topping stash, but it's worth it.  Preparing a batch as each vegetable hits peak season means that I'm not constantly slaving away in the kitchen [it only seems like that in August-September with the tomato canning, though, like childbirth, I'd do it again] yet I get to enjoy a wide variety of homemade, locally grown sauces on our pizzas throughout the year.

I don't want to tell you what to do want to subliminally brainwash you to consider trying to put up one pizza topping in your freezer this summer. Here's some suggestions, in order of when they're ripe and ready throughout the season--all of these store well in the freezer.

• Will it be Garlic Scape Pesto? (link to my recipe)
• How about Roasted Garlic? (link to my recipe)
• Maybe some jars of Fresh Tomato Pesto? (link to my recipe)
• Perhaps plain ol' ordinary Pesto? (link to my recipe)

Think about it and get back to me.  In the meantime, here's one way you could use your bounty: pizza.

I'm not sure if regular readers noticed, but it's turning into Garlic Scape Week around here. I'm preparing a Garlic Scape Recipe Round Up for my next post and wanted to include some of the ways I feed my family garlic scapes from our garden and the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share.  [In order to include my recipes in the round up, I kinda needed to post them first.]

I started off by sharing how I put up my scapes in the form of pesto, combined with a variety of leaves (I'm partial to parsley and basil) as well as an assortment of nuts (I'm partial to pistachio and sunflower seeds).  I use this pesto in all sorts of things, from Hummus to Shrimp Scampi and now, because it's a Friday and my family likes our Friday Night Pizza Nights, on a pizza.

I made two pizzas using this Garlic Scape and Pistachio pesto:  a plain cheese one and a more involved Sun-dried Tomato, Artichoke, and Olive with Fresh Mozzarella pie.  Since I was making a number of pizzas, I told the kids to go ahead and eat the cheese one while it was hot.  By the time I joined them they'd nearly demolished it and my son told me "this tastes just like cheesy garlic flatbread". Well, now I don't have to come up with a creative title--thanks!

Garlic Scape Pistachio Pesto Hummus

Garlic scapes, basil, parsley and pistachios combined in a traditional hummus base for a fresh Spring dip. Garlic scape pesto freezes to have this seasonal treat year round.

For other recipes using Garlic Scapes, please see my Garlic & Garlic Scapes Recipe Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for seasonal eaters faced with a staggering amount of fresh produce we just don't know what to do with. I've got a Pinterest board of Garlic Scape Recipes here, and a Round Up of 28+ Food Blogger Recipes Using Garlic Scapes here. Want to know how to Use This Blog?

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Part One: The Making of Garlic Scape Pesto

To paraphrase Dick Van Dyke's Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang ("Don't waste your pucker on some all day sucker.  And don't try a toffee or cream.  If you seek perfection in sugar confection, well, there's something new on the scene") don't waste your scapes in some Spring stir fry, instead try this pesto, it's green.

When I read Annie's post about garlic scape pesto I was intrigued.  I'd never tried it, but it sounded good.  When my CSA farm share and my garlic bed provided me with garlic scapes I knew I'd give it a try.  As it turned out, I didn't follow my own directions for stocking up on pesto supplies before the garlic scapes appeared.  I did have a block of parmesan, but I didn't have any pine nuts.

I got to thinking . . . why do I have to use pine nuts in pesto?  Weren't the original pesto makers just using what was readily available to them, not sourcing to China to make a sauce? (Check your bag of pine nuts, you'd be surprised)  I mean, I had great success using almonds and cashews in my Fresh Tomato Pesto.  In my pantry I've got almonds, walnuts, pistachios, and sunflower seeds available--I chose pistachios for this just because they are green and would enhance the bright green of this garlic scape pesto.

[In fact, I had a lil' ol' pestopalooza party with all the garlic scapes and fresh herbs after my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share resumed--that flood of green after the long winter was so welcome--sure, the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve provided some lovely orange veggies, but man, I missed getting a big ol' box of leafy veggies each week!  I made pesto using garlic scapes and sun dried tomatoes.  I used basil and parsley for the leaves. I used pistachios and sunflower seeds for the nuts.  I wrote down the various combinations, but my favorite is the one I'm sharing below--garlic scapes with pistachio nuts and basil.]

Because I plan ahead, and will be putting up this pesto by freezing it, I keep it a little thicker by using less oil.  By freezing this pesto, the plant cell walls that weren't disrupted by the food processor will burst, resulting in a more liquid pesto when thawed.  If you're not planning on saving some for later, use more oil.

Fast Creamy Honey Wheat Pizza Dough

Use prepackaged 'pizza yeast' with your own additions of honey & cream cheese to make a quick and flavorful whole wheat pizza dough.

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This is a teaser post, and I utterly own up to teasing you with a delicious-yet-unattainable-today pizza.  See, the sauce is made of garlic scape pesto, and you can't find fresh garlic scapes right now.  Not in the grocery store, not in the farmer's market, not off the internet.

Garlic scapes are one of those items that are only available for a brief time, and after that:  poof.  Unlike asparagus (another actually seasonal item that's nowadays available in the grocery store year-round because it's shipped from other countries during the off-season) garlic scapes are a get-them-before-they-are-gone item, else you're out of luck.  One of the reasons I enjoy eating seasonally is because I get to look forward to different foods throughout the year.

So why am I sharing this pizza while my garlic bed out in the garden looks like this?

Simply because, again unlike asparagus, you can put up garlic scapes when they are plentiful and enjoy them later.  Garlic scape pesto freezes well, and provides a lovely mild garlic flavor and gorgeous color any time you use it in a dish.  I'm partial to pizza.  

Now, I've already written (and scheduled for Spring, in anticipation of garlic scapes in our Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] farm share) a post about how to make the pesto I used in today's pizza.  Instead I'll share the recipe for dough.

Yes, yes, I know I said in my Pizza Primer that I make my dough days ahead.  I usually do.  But not always--sometimes it's Friday afternoon and I've got nothing prepared.  That's when I grab a packet of pizza crust yeast [This is not a sponsored post, I buy my own packets--with coupons, always--and Fleischmann's doesn't know I exist. I'm just sharing the name of a product that I buy, use, and love--and if it inspires you to be successful in making pizza at home I'd love to hear it in the comments below.]

The inspiration for this pizza crust came from my friend Kim, who said she often makes a honey wheat pizza on her family pizza nights.  Never having tried honey wheat dough, I decided to adjust the recipe on the pizza crust yeast packet to make my own fast honey wheat dough.  I also threw in some cream cheese in lieu of oil just because I had some sitting on the counter from my son's post-braces removal Everything Bagel after school snack.  I can't call this a fat-free dough because I used regular cream cheese, and I can't call it oil-free dough because I did put it in an oiled bowl and used oil on the parchment paper.  So Fast Creamy Honey Wheat Pizza Dough it is.