Chicken Caesar Pizza

In college I worked at an Italian restaurant that made tremendous chicken caesar pizzas. The restaurant bakes these unique pizzas in a wood fired grill with cheese and chicken, then topped  the pizza with a caesar salad. Essentially, it's a very yummy pizza salad! When I brought this pizza home to my college roommates, we gobbled it up like a rare delicacy. Of course in those days when we lived off of instant potatoes and ramen noodles, a hot fresh homemade pizza did seem like a delicacy. Recently I've been craving the chicken caesar pizza from my college days so I set about to make my own version.

I took the easy road and used pizza dough from a box. I also used store bought reduced fat caesar dressing. The best part of this pizza for me is the pinenuts! I toasted them before hand to bring out the nutty and buttery flavor. I also added mushrooms to the pizza, which I don't believe are on the restaurant's chicken caesar pizza. 

Ingredients

Pizza dough

2 chicken breasts

1 package of mushrooms, sliced

olive oil

Fresh Parmesan cheese

2 bunches romaine lettuce

1/4 cup caesar dressing

fresh grated black pepper

1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted to golden brown for 5 minutes at 350 degrees - watch these carefully!

Directions

Grill chicken and slice into bite sized pieces. Form pizza dough and spread out on pan. Drizzle olive oil on the pizza dough. Arrange chicken and mushrooms on the pizza and cover with cheese. Bake at 425 degrees for 20 - 22 minutes, until crust is golden brown. 

While the pizza is baking cut lettuce into bite sized pieces. Mix in dressing and grate shredded cheese over the top. 

Allow pizza to cool for about 5 minutes and top with the caesar salad. Sprinkle pine nuts on the top and season with black pepper to taste. Cut and serve with a fork and knife.