Healthy Choices: Homemade Veggie Pizza

Every Friday, for the last 15 years, is pizza night at our house. Pizza and movie night to be exact. I make homemade pizza and we all retire to watch videos (the kids downstairs, my hubby and I upstairs). It’s our date night, on the cheap.  Everyone gets grumpy if they have to miss pizza night.

Now my favorite pizza toppings are pineapple and tomato, but one night early this year I didn’t have either on hand, so I decided to try some veggies.

Years ago, when I was a nanny in southern California, there was this pizza delivery place that made the BEST vegetable pizza. So I decided to see if I could make one I like. And discovered that I actually really prefer a veggie pizza over my pineapple and tomatoes (though that’s still good).

I’ve also since been working on moving toward a healthier crust. We’ve used the same pizza dough recipe for years, but started tweaking it, transitioning to a more whole wheat recipe. 

For my kids and hubby, I make this pizza dough recipe 2 cups white, 1 cup whole wheat, with a 1/4 cup of my favorite high fiber additive (Bob’s Red Mill High Fiber Cereal). 

For my 12 yo daughter and I, I make it as either 1 1/2 cups white and 1 1/2 cups whole wheat  with 1/4 cup of the fiber additive, or all 3 cups whole wheat flour with a 1/4-1/2 cup of fiber additive. You can play around and see what you like.

Here’s the pizza dough recipe:

2 1/2 teaspoons yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

1 cup water

Combine and let proof that for 10 minutes

Add in:

2 Tablespoons EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil)

1 teaspoon salt

3 1/4 flour mixture (I usually do the 3 cups of flour and 1/4 of fiber additive)

Mix & Knead until smooth and elastic. Remember if you are using whole wheat dough, it requires a little more kneading than white flour. (I cheat and use my mixer ) 

 Let rise, covered, in an oiled bowl for 1 hour or until double. Break into balls and press out on a greased pan. 

(2 batches of this recipe makes 1 large pizza and 3 small pizzas for my family)

Now for the Toppings:

For pizza sauce, I use a quick and simple homemade pizza sauce recipe made from tomato paste, honey, and a little seasoning.

Then for my pizza, I chop up my veggies. I prefer carrots, broccoli, zucchini, and spinach. You can use whatever your favorites are. I sometimes will mix broccoli and cauliflower. And have found that I don’t care for zucchini on the pizza if there’s no broccoli (not sure why).  Anyway, the veggies all chopped up look something like this:

After I put on the sauce and a thin sprinkling of mozerella cheese, I put the carrots on the bottom, then the broccoli, and then zucchini. So it looks something like this:

Then I pile on handfuls of spinach and sprinkle on the cheese. The spinach cooks down, but when it’s fresh it is a huge pile of veggies. My husband just shakes his head at how many veggies are on this pizza, but I like it. 

Here you can see the height difference between my veggie pizza and his salami-sweet onion-bell pepper pizza next to it (before it’s cooked):

So this is cooked for 10-12 minutes at 450, and it’s done.

That’s it. I usually end up eating all but 3 or 4 pieces, which I then save for breakfast. Usually my 10 yo son comes in the morning and steals a piece (which I think is pretty cool that he’ll eat a cold breakfast pizza of veggies )

But anyway, if you like veggies and are looking for a healthier replacement for pizza, I encourage you to experiment and see if you can come up with a veggie pizza that you like.

Enjoy!

…Shannon