I think I need to eat more pizza. We’ve made it a couple times lately, and it’s been fun playing with various toppings and flavours. Pizza is such a great blank slate, you can tailor is as much as you want to your personal preferences. It’s not just about tomato sauce, cheese, and pepperoni. There are endless other possibilities to create a healthier version of the traditional pizza. Therefore, I think you need to eat more pizza.
Turns out pizza is also pretty easy to make, even from scratch. That is, unless you spend an hour trying to (unsuccesfully) make your own mozzarella first. To be fair, I hear mozzarella only takes 20 minutes to make when you do it properly. I’ll definitely be trying it again, knowing where I went wrong last time. My end result was still fairly mozzarella-like, not to mention delicious, so it made its way onto my pizza anyways. If you don’t want to make your own mozzarella, you can of course use store-bought.
You can play around with the toppings, I was mostly working with what I had on hand. A can of chickpeas that was a gag birthday gift from a coworker, an overgrown oregano plant on the kitchen table, leftover spelt flour in the fridge, plus cherry tomatoes, carrot, Swiss chard, and green onion. The end result was so delicious, I can’t believe we don’t make pizza every night.
- 1 can Eden Organic chickpeas
- ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
- ¼ tsp chipotle powder
- ¼ teaspoon smoked paprika
- ¼ teaspoon cumin
- ¼ teaspoon dried oregano
- mineral salt, to taste
- 1 ¾-2 ¼ cups organic sprouted spelt flour
- 1 package (about 8g) pizza yeast
- ⅔ cup warm filtered water
- 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 ½ teaspoons organic cane sugar
- ¾ teaspoon mineral salt
- 8 organic cherry tomatoes, quartered
- 1 large clove of garlic, chopped
- 1 teaspoon organic raw apple cider vinegar
- ¼ teaspoon mineral salt
- black pepper, to taste
- 2-4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 3 sprigs fresh oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried)
- ¼ teaspoon dried marjoram
- ⅓-½ cup nutritional yeast, to thicken
- ½ large carrot, spiralized
- 1 green onion, chopped
- 1 large Swiss chard leaf, sliced (stem included)
- organic grass-fed mozzarella, shredded
- If you'd like to try making your own mozzarella, these are the instructions I used. The steps are simple, however where I went wrong was stirring the rennet into the milk. I stirred too long, which broke up the curds before they could set properly. If you make sure you don't do this, I'm sure you'll have more luck than me. Otherwise, use store-bought mozzarella.
- Preheat oven to 400F. Place chickpeas in a large bowl and drizzle with olive oil. Add remaining ingredients, toss to coat. Spread on a lined or greased baking sheet and bake 18 minutes until golden. Stir once or twice throughout baking.
- While the chickpeas are in the oven, begin your pizza dough. In a large bowl, mix together 1 cup flour, pizza yeast, sugar, and salt. Add the warm water and oil, mix until well combined. Add more flour, a little at a time, mixing until it forms a soft, slightly sticky dough. Prepare a floured surface, and knead the dough for 4 minutes until smooth and elastic. Add more flour to your surface while kneading, if necessary. Flatten dough into a greased pizza pan or baking sheet. Set aside.
- Place cherry tomatoes, garlic, apple cider vinegar, salt, and pepper in a blender and blend until just smooth. With the motor running, drizzle in olive oil. Add ⅓ cup nutritional yeast and blend. If you'd like a thicker sauce, add more nutritional yeast. Add oregano and marjoram, pulse until just broken down.
- Spiralize your carrot, slice your green onions and Swiss chard, shred your mozzarella. If your cheese is too soft to shred like mine was, form it into little pancakes instead to place all over the top of your pizza.
- Increase oven heat to 425F. On top of your pizza crust, spoon pizza sauce. Arrange green onion, Swiss chard, and spiralized carrot on top of the sauce. Scatter chickpeas over top, then lastly add mozzarella cheese. Place pizza in the oven and bake 12-15 minutes until crust and cheese are golden in colour. Slice and enjoy immediately!
gluten-free // use a gluten-free pizza crust mix
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