Homemade veggie pizza!!!

I decided to celebrate my first blogoversary with a homemade veggie pizza. I wanted to keep it simple and I am glad it turned out to be that way.

I was little worried about it. Initially I was thinking of buying a fresh pizza dough from my favourite pizzeria. In the mean time,I searched few recipes online, browsed through some videos and finally decided to make a homemade dough, just to make the whole experience more adventurous......:P

Pizza as we all know a great party food, kids love it too. Ultimate finger food to munch on. So let's not spend more time in discussions, let's just hop on to the recipe along with some step-by-step pictures.

Here is the list of ingredients I used:

1. 1 cup of whole wheat flour
2. 1 cup of all purpose flour
3. 1 package of Active dry yeast (I used FLEISCHMANN'S)
4. 1 teaspoon salt
5. 1/2 teaspoon sugar
6. 1 cup of very warm water
7. 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil ( I used extra virgin olive oil)

Here is how you make the dough:

• Take 1/4 of warm water in a bowl and add the yeast in to it. Stir the yeast well until dissolved.

Heads up: The temperature of the water is the key here. Too much hot water will kill the yeast and less than warm temperature will not yield any effect. The perfect temperature is 120° F to 130° F.

• Add the remaining 3/4 cup of water in the same bowl with the salt, olive oil and wheat as well as all purpose flour. Mix well. Use your hands to mix and knead the dough.

• Add some more flour if you want to make a soft dough.

• After making a soft dough keep it in the bowl and cover it with a wet towel.

• Keep it covered in a warn place. I kept the bowl over the stove top, that's the place where I usually keep my yogurt to set. Keep it for 60 minutes.
• Check after 60 minutes, the dough should have doubled in size.

• Punch the dough down , knead it for 3-4 minutes more, coat the dough with some Olive oil and keep it covered again for 30 minutes.

• Your dough should be ready in an hour and a half.

Easy right? Not very tough.

Now it's time to prepare the toppings for the pizza. You can really go crazy with the toppings. I love my pizza with all kinds of veggies in the world. One more reason I like homemade pizza is because I can through any veggies I like and I have on hand. When you go out to eat pizza or order a takeout, there are very limited choice of veggies available.

I made this with the following veggies:

• Broccoli
• Tomatoes
• Onions
• Asparagus
• Green bell pepper
• Red bell pepper
• Lots of zucchini.....I love it on pizza.

Last but not the least....CHEESE........mozerella. Parmesan will work fine too. I find mozzarella better because it melts well on the pizza.

Time to put everything together:

Set the oven to 475° F.

• On a pizza pan sprinkle some cornmeal/ flour . Place the dough on the pan and using your hands just spread the dough over the pan.

• Those who love thin crust, make two parts of the dough and take one to spread across. Thick crust lovers can use all the dough.
• After spreading the dough, apply the pizza sauce all over the base. I used ready made pizza sauce, you can also make it at home. There are plenty of recipes available online for that.

• Next comes the veggies. Spread over all of them on the pizza.

• Top the veggies with mozzarella cheese.

• Brush the edges of the base with extra virgin olive oil. This will give nice crunchy browned edges after the pizza is done.

• Slide the pizza in the preheated oven for about 35 minutes. Make sure that your base is cooked completely.

Pizza will be ready in about 35-to 40 minutes depending on the oven. You will know when the cheese starts to bubble and pizza will have a nice brown color just like this...

Something that I would do different next time-: When I checked my pizza after 35 minutes, I felt that my base wasn't cooked well, so I had to keep it for another 10 minutes or so. It turned out well, but I think it will be better if I prebake the crust next time, just for 5 minutes or so, that will make the pizza bake evenly.

What do you think? I would love to hear your experiences...:)

ohh and don't forget to grab a slice....

Enjoy!!