Healthy Homemade Pizza

Homemade pizza is probably the best thing you can dream about making at home. It is not hard to make at all and the beauty of homemade pizza is that you can customize it and choose the toppings you absolutely love and even make it a healthy pizza too. How? Simply by substituting certain ingredients for healthier options. See my recipe below for all these details.

A little history about pizza

Italian pizza has definitely conquered the world. It really has! Its crisp, 'bready' crust and the classic tomato and mozzarella cheese topping make it truly the best.

The first pizza originated in Southern Italy in Naples in the 18th century. Pizza was baked in wood ovens and then hawked by youngsters in the narrow streets of Naples.

One of the most famous pizza maker Raffaelle Esposito was the most known pizza-maker in the late 1890s and he was invited to prepare his speciality pizzas for the king and the queen of Italy who were just visiting Naples. He made the Mastunicola (topped with lard, cheese and basil), Marinara (tomato, garlic, oregano and oil) and a pizza that was made for the occasion and called after the queen Margherita who loved this pizza.

The enthusiastic pizza-maker named the pizza after the queen, pizza Margherita (tomato, oil, mozzarella cheese and basil) ingredients to recall the Italian flag colours (red white and green). Pizza was soon taken all over the world by the droves of immigrants who left Italy in the 19th -20th century.

How to make homemade pizza healthy?

Making your own pizza in the comfort of your own home is nice and not difficult at all. Give it a try and you will be surprised how uncomplicated this actually is.

Making a habit of making your own pizza dough from scratch in itself is a much healthier option as ready-made ones in stores contain nasties almost 100% of the time. These contain all sort of agents and hydrogenated oils not to mention other ingredients that sometimes cannot even be pronounced.

My food intake policy is that if any label contains stuff you cannot pronounce then you cannot digest it either! Leave it there on the shelf and consider making your own.

It is exactly what I did with my Yorkshire puddings some time ago. Love them, used to buy them even more often than I should have. I did not consider making my own because yes, it was convenient buying them ready-made and I always thought they were so difficult to make at home. This was until one day when I dared to give these a try. Guess what?! it was a true first-time success. Never bought them ever again, I probably never will!

It can be the same with your own homemade pizza experience. Especially for those that eat pizza often, it would be a real shame not to try making your own made from scratch pizza dough.

Things to consider when turning your homemade pizza into a healthy pizza option:

• substitute the heavily processed white flour for a spelt flour option, add half spelt, half wholemeal, choose a nice organic flour option
• make your own pizza sauce from scratch - you will only need two ingredients for this: - a nice organic tomato sauce or a tin of chopped tomatoes and dried herbs like oregano, basil, thyme.
• choose nice healthy toppings, a good mozzarella cheese, anchovies, capers, nitrates free meats like chorizo, bacon, prosciutto
• only use EVOO ( extra virgin olive oil) all throughout
• why not even add some extra nutrition to the pizza base/crust such as flaxseeds, chia seeds, pumpkin or sunflower seeds which can be ground up and made into flour.

Making your own homemade pizza made from those ingredients, you will never go wrong, it is a truly Mediterranean way of eating, the only way we maintain a good healthy gut and lifestyle.

Ask yourself a question: How many times a week, or a month do I have or I'd love to have a pizza? Well, the answer is you could probably have it even more often with clean ingredients like these without feeling any guilt at all.

The best part and aspect of home cooking, in general, is that we will always know what we are ingesting to the very last ingredient! Time to make that change I think, just give this homemade pizza recipe a try.

Ingredients needed for homemade pizza

For this easy pizza dough:

• spelt flour and wholemeal 70:30 ratio
• water
• salt
• yeast
• EVOO extra virgin olive oil

For pizza toppings:

• tomato sauce (you can use a homemade pasta sauce too)
• dried herbs (I have used a mix)
• prosciutto (nasties free)
• onions
• black olives
• green olives
• mozzarella
• mushrooms
• fresh tomatoes

Homemade Pizza Thin Crust

If you fancy a thin crust ( like I almost always do) here's the trick:

To get a thin crust, we need to spread and stretch more the pizza dough, stretch as much as you wish. To me, the thinner, the better but it also depends on the pizza toppings. The more you add to your pizza as toppings, the thicker the crust you'd want to add.

Any homemade pizza it's amazing, whether that's thin crust, medium crust or thick crust. Just take the little challenge and make your own pizza. You will not look back.

Turn homemade pizza into a greek homemade pizza recipe

If you want to send your tastebuds for a real loop, do it! Do it quick!

For this you will need:

Dried Oregano

Dried oregano it’s a staple in Greek and Mediterranean cuisine.

Mozzarella cheese

Use any fresh mozzarella but semi or part-skim mozzarella will get more golden and bubbly.

Roasted Red Peppers

Jarred roasted red peppers are perfect on pizza and offer extra flavor. Or, you could use narrow two-inch long strips of fresh bell pepper, if you prefer.

Artichoke

Use jarred, marinated or canned artichoke. I sliced my jarred quartered artichokes in half again to make bite-sized wedges.

Kalamata Olives

Kalamata olives develop amazing intense flavour when cooked in the oven.

Crumbled Feta

Crumbled feta offers some truly irresistible creaminess, saltiness.

Optional Garnishes

Hot from the oven, I like to top this veggie pizza with torn fresh basil leaves and red pepper flakes

FAQs:

Here are some more homemade pizza recipes - quick and easy - that you will enjoy making depending on the time and ingredient availability:

• Pizza sauce - make this from scratch - you must try and make every time you make homemade pizza from scratch whether this is a vegan pizza, a vegetarian or a meat option/version.
• Green Pizza - from Taste
• Vegetarian pizza on ciabatta bread
• Quick breakfast Pizza slices with quail eggs and a special tomato sauce
• Apple and walnut pizza - a sweet version. Why not?

Pizza tomato sauce tips

If you do not have time to make a good homemade pizza sauce from scratch you could definitely use any organic jarred pasta sauce that you can buy from the supermarket. Some really good ones here in the UK are totally free from any flavour enhancers, unnecessary additives and nasties. I do recommend and totally encourage you to make your own pizza sauce as it can be ready in no time, really effortless and totally worth it.