Pizza!

homemade pizza...yum!

I'll start of this post with these pictures of the pizza I made last night. When I first began my quest to clean up my diet and eat more healthy foods, I had a very difficult time giving up our family pizza nights each week. It's a tradition, and it was hard to sit and eat a salad (even though I love salads!) while the rest of the family was eating pizza. I decided that if I had to give it up, I would. But I went on a search for a healthy pizza recipe and was delighted when I found one!

For awhile, I tried to eat the "more healthy" pizzas that you can find at the grocery store. They were a little better than your regular pizza! But even though they used whole ingredients, it was still processed food. The pizzas still had a lot of fat and preservatives, and after eating it I felt like I'd just eaten the same regular pizza that my family did. The only plus to getting a "healthy" frozen pizza from the store was the fact that I'd buy the individual pizzas, so my portion size was manageable. That wasn't enough of a plus to keep me on that path, however, so I searched for a good homemade wheat crust to use.

After finding a good recipe for a simple whole wheat pizza crust (thank you, Google!), I just loaded it up with as many veggies as I had on hand (peppers, onions, mushrooms, broccoli, etc) and topped it with mozzarella cheese. It's delicious! And when you pull it out of the oven, it doesn't have pools of grease sitting on top. (That would always gross me out!) As I've found over and over again, homemade food really is the best!

There are hundreds of recipes for pizza dough online, and to be honest, I just clicked on the first one I found. When I was looking, I was in a time crunch and couldn't wait 30 minutes or more for the dough to rise, which is why this recipe doesn't call for that. All it takes is:

1 pkg, dry yeast
1 C warm water
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp oil
2 1/2 C flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Stir in remaining ingredients. Let stand 5 minutes. Spread in buttered pans. Put on toppings. Bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Easy! If anyone else makes their pizzas and has a yummy recipe to share, please do so. Our family has switched over from buying frozen pizzas to making our own in the past few months, and it's working great. It saves us a lot of money (because we eat pizza every Friday!) and we're able to personalize them by putting on the toppings that we all like. And seeing everyone in our family likes something different, it has alleviated a lot of stress because we can make exactly what we want. :-)

Wow! I wasn't planning on taking up a whole post by talking about pizza. My next post will be much more spiritual, as I'm excited to share a search on beauty that the Lord is showing me in His Word. Keep checking back! I promise that it won't be a month before you hear from me again. :-)

Till then ~ Bekah