Deep Dish Pizza with Artichokes, Kalamata Olives, and Garlic Scape Pesto

This pizza is layered with mozzarella cheese, marinated artichoke hearts, and kalamata olives tucked under an Italian sausage blanket spread with garlic scape pesto.

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I'm working on refining my "elevator speech", a way to describe what it is I do to people I meet.

In the 30 second version, I'll touch on the flavor of a freshly picked tomato or strawberry vs their store bought counterparts and comment that it's easy to choose to eat locally for the flavor. In the longer version, I'll bring up garlic scapes--one of the more unusual, you've never seen this before therefore it must be locally grown, items in a Spring farm share basket. I specify Spring because, even though you'll only find garlic scapes right after they are harvested in the early part of the growing season--you can put up garlic scapes to enjoy year round.

I'll be giving a talk about local eating at my neighborhood community center in May, and I'm hoping for a couple of garlic scapes to harvest as props. Conveniently I missed a few bulbs of garlic when I harvested last June, and those older established bulbs have a jump on the garlic I planted last October so it's possible I'll have my 'visual aids'. If you're puzzled by what a garlic scape is--it's just what would be the flowering portion of garlic. You can see some gorgeous shots of a scape here on my Garlic Scape Recipe Round Up. I plant my garlic cloves, just like my daddy plants daffodils, in the Fall. Instead of enjoying the pretty flowers, though, I cut off the curly scape while the blossom is still a tight bud, and pulverize those stems for their mild garlic flavor.  With no energy needed to go for a showy floral display, the resulting garlic bulb is bigger--my end goal.

Now, I'll rave about garlic scapes to anyone who will listen, but the way I love them most is in pesto. I will freeze scoops of pesto (I make it thick so it stays in a clump when freezing) for up to a year. Initially I'm hoarding my garlic scape pesto stash, but this time of year I'm seeing the garlic pop up (and sharing it on my Instagram feed) and knowing that scape season is approaching so I can be free and easy with my stash.

This ^^ is all to say that, in this pizza, I used some of my garlic scape pesto as the sauce. If you don't have a stash in your freezer, use any pesto you feel like using. It will be delicious because you made it with love, and that's what matters the most, right?

For more recipes using garlic scapes, please see my Garlic and Garlic Scapes Recipe Collection.  For more recipes using artichokes and olives, I lumped them into a Recipes Using Veggies In Jars Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating locally, seasonally, or from a freezer stash of goodies. I've got more pizzas in my Visual Pizza Recipe Index, broken up into categories of dough, vegetarian pizzas, pizzas with meat and savory pizzas with fruit. I still haven't gone in the direction of a dessert pizza. Perhaps someday.

I'm sharing more pizzas on my Pinterest boards, follow me there. I'm finding articles of interest and sharing them on my Facebook page, follow me there. I'm sharing behind the scenes and what's up in my garden photos on my Instagram feed, follow me there. Want to know How To Use This Blog?

Deep Dish Pizza with Artichokes, Kalamata Olives, and Garlic Scape Pesto

Ingredients

• 8 to 10 ounces pizza dough (this was a creamy honey wheat dough)
• 1 to 2 teaspoons olive oil, plus another Tablespoon or so mixed into the pesto if needed
• thinly sliced mozzarella cheese (enough to cover the bottom of your pizza)
• ⅓ cup chopped kalamata olives 
• ⅓ cup chopped marinated artichoke hearts
• ½ pound Italian sausage (best not in patty or link form, just loose)
• ⅓ cup prepared pesto (I used garlic scape pesto but any type is fine)
• 1 to 1½ cups shredded fontina cheese

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Swirl a teaspoon or two of oil around a 10 inch cast iron skillet. 
2. Dump the dough into the skillet and press it across the bottom and up the sides. 
3. Place the mozzarella slices across the bottom of the crust, overlapping to make a solid layer. 
4. Scatter the olives and artichoke hearts across the sliced cheese.
5. Sandwich the sausage between 2 sheets of plastic wrap or wax paper and flatten it out into a disc the size of the pizza. Peel off one sheet of plastic wrap and lay on top of the vegetables, as shown. Remove the top sheet of plastic wrap.
6. If your pesto is thick, as mine is, stir in a Tablespoon or so of olive oil to make it into a spreadable sauce.
7. Spread pesto across the sausage. 
8. Top with shredded cheese. 
9. Place pizza in a preheated oven, reduce oven temperature to 425 degrees, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes until cheese is browned and sauce is bubbly.