pizza

Make Your Own Pizza Night

We love to do “make your own pizza” nights at our house. Overall we prefer our own pizza to most restaurant pizza because we can control the ingredients and make it exactly to each person’s liking. I also think it is a lot healthier than restaurant pizza as well. Today my daughter and I made our own sauce (see Basic Tomato Sauce recipe), but we often buy commercially-made organic sauce. I do always buy the pizza dough. There is nothing I dislike more than kneading dough, so I buy Whole Foods fresh pre-made whole wheat dough and go from there. I think because we like to make out dough cracker-thin (except for my son) that probably any dough will do. The other thing about “make your own pizza” night is that we load our pizza with veggies, no restaurant will ever do that!

Servings: 4
Time: 1 hour, plus more if you make your own sauce
Difficulty: easy-medium
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Homemade healthy pizza recipe that can be tailored to individual preferences.

Ingredients

These are really up to the cook. I will list the ingredients I used today (and most often), but use the items you like best. Think of the pizza crust as a “blank slate” and fill it however you like.

1 package of pre-made pizza dough such as Whole Foods Whole Wheat Pizza dough.
Mozzarella cheese – amount varies per person.
Basic Tomato Sauce (see recipe)
1 spicy chicken sausage (to please my carnivorous husband), baked and chopped. (I also used a chicken apple sausage for my son’s pizza)
1 bag of spinach.
1 package of exotic mushrooms, sliced (plus some button mushrooms if you love mushrooms like I do!)
1 bell pepper, diced
Optional: chopped jalapenos or dried red pepper flakes

Procedure

Let pizza dough rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes.
Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.
Cook the chicken sausage in the oven. Time will vary depending on the type you use. Let cool and chop.
Put spinach in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 30 – 60 seconds to wilt. Squeeze out excess liquid. Chop spinach and set aside.
Slice mushrooms and spread in a single layer on a baking sheet that has been sprayed with cooking spray. Season with salt and pepper. Bake at 425 for 10 – 15 minutes or until the mushrooms have dried some. Soak up remaining liquid if necessary.
Dice a bell pepper of your choice.
Chop a jalapeno if you desire a little spice (or dried red pepper flakes if that is more convenient).
Roll out pizza dough to desired thickness and desired sizes. We make 4 pizzas out of one package of Whole Foods pizza dough. Usually one is small and thick and the others are very thin and have a diameter of roughly 10”.
Pre-bake pizza dough on a baking sheet or pizza stone for 5-7 minutes (depending on oven). We like to get it crispy, but not everyone does.
Spread sauce on cooked dough. Spread desired amount of cheese. Spread desired toppings.
Bake for 5-7 minutes, depending on oven.
Remove from oven, slice and enjoy!