Pizza Pie!

Saturday night I made a delicious home made pizza with my boyfriend.  Someone saw the delicious photo on Instagram and asked for some information on it.  So I thought I'd write a blog post about how this came to be.  I always, like most people, CRAVE pizza.  The combination of the melted cheese, sweet and tangy tomato sauce and soft but crisp bread is just what my mouth usually craves.  But it has such a bad reputation for being unhealthy!  and it is, if you buy it some where else at least.  Now this is not scientifically a healthier pizza, but I am just guessing that my more natural techniques and and ingredients must make this somewhat healthier! My theory is at least, if the crust is thinner and I pile on delicious veggies on top, then its healthier, right??

 While at Sawall's health foods, I saw a packet of Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free pizza dough.  You can probably get any pizza dough mix you like, but I know that is a good brand with pretty natural ingredients.  I had the pizza craving but a few problems:  trying to eat more wholesome ingredients, consume less fat, and have no electric mixer.  I decided to bust out my guns and purchase the dough.  

Saturday I had my normal pizza craving, so we made the dough.  It comes with a yeast packet, which is really handy, not all mixes have this ingredient in the bag (check whatever brand you buy to make sure it does!)

Personally, I ran out of eggs from breakfast, so I used the vegan recipe of no eggs but using flax seed mill set with water for a minute as the egg substitute! (Bob's red mill also makes this if you are interested, lots of health benefits!) Eggs work just fine too though, but this substitute cut out some of the cholesterol.  

The dough was hand kneaded.  I found it to be a little wet, so I'd add some flour once you have followed the dough making instructions. Don't forget to let it rise.  We put the bowl of rising dough on the open top to get some of the heat from the preheating oven to help with the yeast.    

I then realized I have no pizza sauce!  So I made my own:

small can of tomato paste

can of water

1 large chopped tomato

1  1/2 teaspoon of basil (or however much you'd like!)

2 cloves garlic (I didn't put garlic in my sauce because I like to knead minced garlic in my dough!!)

Boil it until it thickens to your liking, I think mine boiled for like 20 minutes.  

Roll the dough out over the olive oiled pan, the mix i used said to bake it naked first, so we did! then take it out, put the sauce on! Then comes the fun part!

TOPPINGS!

We went for a more Mediterranean style pizza, bottom layer of spinach and kale, then some crumbled feta cheese, black olives and artichokes, then a tiny bit of shredded cheese.  I like to shred my own from a block, I used colby-jack but mozzarella is more pizza traditional.  

Bake as long as necessary (for my dough it was about 15-18 minutes depending on how you like your crust to be too)

and VOILA!  you have delicious, and must be more nutritious and definitely less greasy pizza!

It is semi time consuming, but so worth it!! Also great as left overs!

This is the pizza before I baked it!  

There is no after picture because my Su chef and I smashed it all!  

Kinda looks like a salad right?? Hopefully my stomach thought so!!

<3 Sue