Garden Pizza

If you haven’t heard of this book yet, you HAVE to go out and get it: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.  I LOVE fresh bread but hate kneading and such and most of the recipes in here are all about dropping a piece of dough on your pizza stone and cooking it.  You make a wet dough that can sit in your fridge for up to 2 weeks and you just take off chunks as you need it.

Anyway, that is where my pizza dough comes from but you can use this recipe with the pre-made pizza dough at the store.  This is a healthy alternative to a greasy delivery pizza.  The whole family loved it down to the 2 year old.  This is a great “garbage” pizza too – when I make it this week it’ll have tomatoes and zucchini but also leftover chicken and whatever else needs to leave the fridge!

Ingredients:

-1 pizza dough – homemade or store bought

-1/2 cup tomato sauce – you can use plain or I used some Newman’s Own Tomato and Basil Spaghetti Sauce leftover in the fridge

-If using plain tomato sauce, you can spice it up with 1/2 tsp dried Italian seasoning

-Fresh vegetables – I used 1 large tomato thinly sliced and 1 zucchini thinly sliced lengthwise.  Use anything you want to!  Tomatoes, broccoli florets, mushrooms, sausage, etc.

-Salt and pepper

-1/2 cup to 1 cup shredded cheese – I prefer mozzarella but you can use feta or cheddar or anything on hand

Directions:

1.  Prepare your pizza crust and oven according to package or cookbook directions.  Spread sauce in a thin layer over crust, leaving an inch or so around the edge without sauce (this produces a yummy crust to hold onto!).

2.  Layer your vegetables on the sauce, sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste and then top with cheese.  Bake according to directions on package or in cookbook.

I know it seems easy enough, but I never thought to put vegetables on a pizza in this way.  We’ll be trying this on the grill this week so the house doesn’t get so dirty!