VEGETARIAN PIZZA

Making your own pizza from scratch is not quite as easy as buying a ready made frozen pizza or ordering one from your favorite restaurant.  But making a pizza at home is worth the effort as it tastes wonderful!  I made a vegetarian pizza using a recipe for the crust that my sister-in-law provided when she made spinach feta pizza.  For the vegetables, I used a variety of vegetables that I had in the fridge.  For the cheese topping, I used goat cheese and mozzarella.  Instead of using tomato sauce to cover the pizza dough, I used pesto sauce.  Because the cooking time for a pizza is not long and I am not using a commercial pizza oven, I softened the vegetables by first microwaving all of them except the olives, green onions and tomatoes for about 90 seconds.

The dough has been made and is ready to be covered in order to let it rise.

The dough has doubled in size and is ready to be rolled out with a rolling pin.

I rolled the dough out right to the edge of the pizza clay baker.

Following covering of the dough with pesto sauce, I started to add the vegetables.  

Everything is on the pizza except for the grated mozzarella which is the last ingredient to be added.

Hot out of the oven and waiting to be sliced.  The crust looks dark because I used whole wheat flour. 

Dough:

¾ cup warm water

½ tsp salt

½ tsp sugar

1 tbsp instant yeast

¼ cup cornmeal

2 cups flour, approximately.

Mix the first 5 ingredients.  Gradually add the flour to form a soft dough, knead a few times and then cover with a sheet of plastic followed by a dish towel.  Let rise to double.  This could take up to two hours.  Roll out to fit a large pizza pan or a clay pizza baker.  You don’t need to let it rise a second time and you can start to add the toppings.

  

Toppings:

pesto sauce

1 small zucchini, sliced

1 yellow pepper, sliced into strips

5 mushrooms, sliced

2 green onions, chopped

¼ cup back olives, sliced

8 spears asparagus

2 tomatoes sliced

goat cheese, cut into small pieces

mozzarella cheese, grated

Directions:

Add the toppings to the pizza dough by first spreading the pesto sauce over the complete surface of the dough.  Add the other vegetables.  The last ingredients to be added are the cheeses.

Bake at 425°F for about 20 minutes.