Homemade Healthy Pizza

Sometimes all you want is a little pizza. But goodness knows, restaurants can get expensive, and take-out, well, it's not always good. You have Domino's, Papa John's, Pizza Hut and countless other Italian pizzerias. Some are good, even amazing, but many are either greasy, the sauce is sweet or salty, the pies are small, the crust is too thin/too thick... You can't really control everything. It may be good, but not perfect. Yes, I know, I sound like a control freak. Sometimes I am.
And I kind of am when it comes to my pizza. Sometimes, all I want is a healthy, fresh pizza. Most delivery places don't have many options (although I admit there are several pizza places that do delivery and do pizza really, really well... I'll be posting about some of those options in my area soon).
So, what does the control freak in me suggest? Make your own. It's really easy to make your own  HEALTHY pizza and it's a lot of fun. It can be an individual activity (think stress relief while pounding out and rolling your dough) or a family activity (flour flying, individual pies ecc).

On Saturday night I made some pizza.
I was tempted to make my own dough, but laziness definitely won out.
We found delicious wheat dough at the supermarket. Freeze until you need and then defrost for a couple of hours before you wish to make your pizza. And if you're less health conscious (or just dislike wheat dough) there's always regular pizza dough.
When the dough was almost completely defrosted, I rolled it out and shaped one onto a circle pan and the other onto a rectangular baking sheet. If you want to make sure the dough doesn't stick, you can either spray the sheets with pam or lightly dust with flour (or semolina if you have it).
Next, toppings. Ladle some tomato sauce onto each pizza in a small layer. You can use homemade sauce or jarred (if using jarred, I usually add more spicing). Then cheese. Shredded mozzarella. I used a mix of the full fat and low fat Polly-O's shredded cheese and the melt on it was great.
And finally the last toppings. I did one meat pie (since my brother would not stand for "green things" on his slices. It was half pepperoni, 1/4 plain and a 1/4 canadian bacon. Just evenly space the pepperoni and the canadian bacon and pop into the oven. On other pies I usually drizzle a little olive oil on top, but with pepperoni and other fatty meats, it isn't necessary. I did, however, sprinkle the pie with a little oregano.
The round pie was another half and half: diced red and orange baby peppers and onions on one half and swiss chard and onions on the other. Both halves were drizzled with olive oil, oregano, basil, salt and pepper.
And into the oven they went. 350° for about 20 minutes.
The thicker the dough is the longer the pies should stay in. If you prefer a thicker crust you can even bake the dough sans topping to ensure it cooks all the way through without burning or overcooking your toppings.
And that's that. Serve warm with parmesan and red pepper flakes on the side.

It was DELICIOUS!! My family and I ate alot of those pies on Saturday night!

--Raspberry Truffle