Black Bean Pizza

Tonight was a throw-back to our college days. While attending IU Bloomington Rob and I ate A LOT of pizza! Tonight I made my re-creation of Cuban Black Bean pizza from Aver's Gourmet Pizza. I've been making my own pizza crusts for quite some time now, and it's always so time consuming.......all the kneading and waiting and kneading and waiting. So, the past few times we've had pizza I've made the dough in the bread machine. I'll never go back to making the dough by hand. We still get the same great, satisfying taste of homemade pizza crust without the work. I've been using a recipe that was on the back of a yeast packet, but I'm in search of a whole wheat version for the bread machine if anyone has one they want to share.

So, to make the pizza, I topped the dough with cilantro pesto. Layered with with black beans, shredded mozzarella cheese, sliced roma tomatoes, sliced onions and a few pepperoncini rings. I can't really give you much of a recipe, as I didn't measure anything, but I can give you the method and you can create your own from there.

For the pesto I just threw one bunch of cilantro, about 1/4 cup of pine nuts, and 2 cloves of garlic in the food processor. Chopped it up really fine then with the machine running, drizzled in olive oil until it looked the right consistency. I smeared this over the dough then layered with black beans. Again, I can't tell you an amount, but it was about a cup of beans. Sprinkle with shredded mozzarella, add tomatoes, onions and peppers and bake at 425 for about 10-15 minutes.

This pizza is delicious, and you have to try it. It wasn't exactly like Aver's but it was pretty close.