Healthy Homemade Pizza

Did you ever order a takeout pizza and feel like you made a bad decision? Too much money for second-rate food?

That never should happen again. You can make your own pizza in an hour that puts even high quality New York or Chicago pizza from a pizza joint to shame. Our pizza recipe uses fresh ingredients with no additives like flavor enhancers like msg, imitation cheese,  or preservatives. Just high quality ingredients and flavor.

The dough:

Mix one cup and a half of warm water with 2 tablespoons of dry yeast, a teaspoon of honey, a couple shakes of salt, two tablespoons of olive oil and let it sit until you see bubbles of yeast colonies rising (5 minutes or less). While you are doing that chop some veggies for the topping below.

When the yeast becomes active, then add a cup of white flour and stir to mix. Add more flour until the dough ball becomes powdery on the outside and it will be hard to mix in flour. Now, let the dough rise near heat until it doubles. It needs warm (not hot) heat. This can take 15 minutes to half hour. I turn on the oven (500 degrees) and the dough rises on the stove. When the dough has risen, roll it out on a clean counter on whole wheat flour, and work the whole wheat flour into the dough until it barely stops sticking to your hands or the counter. Roll into a ball, press flat into a circular shape to fit the pizza pan. When it is the desired diameter and consistent thickness peel it up off the counter and lay it out on the olive-oiled pan. I usually let it rise another 5 minutes on the pan for thicker crust.

Topping:

Half cup of leftover red pasta sauce (see my pasta spaghetti recipe).

One cup of part-skim mozzarella cheese

Choose your favorites: 1 sliced green pepper, 1/2 medium onion, 3 medium fresh mushrooms, 2 chopped sun dried tomatoes, 5 black olives, chopped garlic and any other favorite veggies. I saute’ the veggies for 5 minutes just to soften and evaporate some water before they go on the pizza but you can throw them on raw if you wish. If you want more protein, lay on some thinly sliced seitan or field roast or veggie sausage.

Spread sauce sparingly over the dough, then veggies, and cheese last. Sprinkle with oregano and parmesan/romano cheese. Bake on center rack until cheese first begins to bubble and brown or cook it the way you like it. Serve with your favorite cold beverage and a salad if you wish.

If this is your first time, I wager that that even with inexperience, it beats any pizza you have ever bought but don’t expect perfection, especially with the dough. You will improve and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have as you are learning. We like to experiment with feta cheese, different sauces and toppings. Let me know what you think!

Do you like this? Check out our other recipes from our Foodies

Tags: Delicious World-Class Vegetarian Pizza, field roast, healthy homemade pizza, seitan

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Foodies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.