Life Like I Like it: Eat Clean Pizza

Eat Clean Pizza

I have been really excited to try and make an eating clean pizza. I never used to like pizza at all, but since I've been pregnant it's really grown on me, and my husband LOVES it! I used a recipe for the dough/crust fromhttp://www.thegraciouspantry.com/clean-eating-pizza-dough/. I followed it pretty much exact.. as for the sauce and toppings, I looked at a bunch of recipes and decided it was easy enough to just wing it.
Here is the dough recipe. It takes about an hour and a half, that's why this is a "Sunday" thing for me - plenty of time!
1 tbsp. honey
1 cup warm water
1 package active dry yeast
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 cups oat flour
4 tsp. vital wheat gluten
1/2 tsp. salt (oops, I forgot to add this!)
2 tbsp. olive oil
I ran hot water in the sink, and thats what I used for warm water. In a small bowl, mix the warm water and honey until the honey is dissolved. Next, add the yeast packet. I gave it one TINY stir to let it mix in, but then I allowed it to sit for at least a half hour while it foamed.
In a separate bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together.

Once the yeast mix has foamed, add it to the dry ingredients and mix until blended. I used my hands to kneed it. Once mixed, add 1 tbsp of olive oil. Kneed together again.

Coat the inside of a bowl with the other tbsp of olive oil, place the dough in the bowl and cover securely with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for one hour.

After an hour, kneed the dough again and let it rise for another 30 minutes.
Roll the dough onto a pizza sheet (I sprayed some non-sick oil on first) so that it is 1/4 inch thick, cover and let it rise another 20-30 mins while you prepare your toppings. **NOTE** It almost doesn't look like it's going to be enough, but it fed us both and we had leftovers.

My husband and I chose different things for our toppings. I wanted spinach (I used fresh and cooked it while I waited on the dough), mushrooms, tomato, and onion. He chose onions (and lots!), green pepper, and salami. --- all organic except the salami.

I decided to use shredded mozzarella cheese and a little colby jack I have left. (Both were from prior to us switching to organic.)

For the sauce I saw a lot of different options but settled on using a can of organic no salt added tomato sauce mixed with minced garlic (about 2 gloves worth) and red crushed chili peppers to taste (about a tbsp.) You can chose to use any variation of tomato substance (stewed, paste, etc) in order to have the consistency you prefer.

After letting my dough "rise" a little more (I really never saw a big difference....) I pre-heated my oven to 410 degrees.

The next step is to spread your sauce and toppings on your pizza. I got a little ahead of myself (I'm was so excited!) and began to put my half's veggies on before the cheese. No big deal though, I caught myself and put the cheese on, then the rest of my veggies and all of his. I used the mozzarella - and a LOT of it.. not so clean after all I guess.. and topped it with just a small handful of Colby Jack.

I popped it in the oven and set the timer for a 10 minute check.

Let me explain something. My kitchen smelt like an italian pizzeria in less than a minute. LESS THAN A MINUTE!!!

At the 10 minute check, everything looked melty gooey. I poked the crust and it seemed a **LITTLE** soft so I gave it another minute. Just one.

ANNDDDDD drumrollllll please!