Blog Archives
Whole Wheat Veggie Pizza
I don’t know how it is Monday already. I feel like we got ripped off with this weekend, just not enough time. This week is set to be a good one though… in just three short days, Grey’s Anatomy returns! I watched the first 3 seasons over summer, the good ole days with George and Izzy ;)
So we’re four weeks into the semester and on-campus meals are starting to wear on me. I pretty much only go to the “cafeteria” with friends, more for a social thing than actual dining preferences. I would much rather eat something healthy I made for myself.
For a nice break, my roommate and I bought a Boboli Whole Wheat pizza crust, some tomato pizza sauce, reduced fat cheese, spinach, purple onion, tomato and bell pepper to make our own loaded-veggie pizza and salad!
After you chop all of the vegetables, it’s super easy to make (Just throw it in the oven at 450 for 10 minutes) and 12 times better than another buffet-style dinner of blah salad and boring sides. We had fun making the pizza and playing some cards in the empty dorm kitchen :)
Playing cards reminds me of camping : )
I know pizza doesn’t sound like the healthiest option but it can actually be a good balance of whole wheat carbs, veggies and vitamins when you minimize the cheese and cut out the extra grease and fat from chain-restaurant slices. I feel better about my diet when I’m in charge of what goes in my meals, and the more veggies the better. Next time I would definitely add some pineapple!
Perfecting the Homemade Pizza
Last night I had a failed attempt at making a dorm room dinner-style mini pizza. The cheese didn’t melt, the crust wasn’t right…there was much room for improvement. While I work on perfecting that, I will share an already-exceptional recipe for my family’s homemade pizzas!
If you are a thin-crust person, you will not like this recipe. These are the fluffiest, thickest pizzas I’ve ever had and I just love it! Plus the blend of white and wheat flour makes them so hearty and adds just the right texture.
For the past year, my family has experimented with pizzas, trying every version you can think of: spicy Thai pizza, pesto shrimp pizza, cheeseburger pizza, BBQ chicken pizza. But what we’ve really perfected is the Crust:
It all sort of happened by accident. You see, 1 teaspoon of yeast was mistaken for 1 Tablespoon and while I would normally expect that kind of baking error to result in some sort of catastrophe, that extra 2 teaspoons of yeast created the lightest and fluffiest, best pizza crust we’ve ever had. From then on, we triple the yeast :P
In a bread maker, combine:
10 oz Water
3/4 tsp salt
3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
2 cups white flour
2 cups Whole wheat flour
1 1/2 Tablespoons dry active yeast
Let it work in the bread maker for 90 minutes, then roll out onto a surface sprinkled with cornmeal and top with your favorite toppings. On this pizza, we piled regular pizza sauce with thick-cut black forrest ham, cashews, pineapple chunks, and fresh mozzerella (I LOVE how the mozzerella chunks look). Cook on a pizza stone (or cookie sheet if you do not have a pizza stone) at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, until the crust is golden. And get ready for the softest pizza crust of your life:
In other news… Today, I will be hitting the pool after my classes in my first “workout” since returning to school! So I am one happy camper. It has been 55 days since surgery, nearly two months. While some progress has been made, there’s still a lot of swelling to go down and we are waiting for the fat graft to soften before I can return to normal running. So swimming it is!
If you have a different favorite pizza recipe or topping, please share! I love trying new ingredients. Also, are you a Pinterest addict like me? Follow me on Pinterest and Pin this here: 
