Homemade pizza

A while back, I posted about how salads can serve as a delicious catch-all for a variety of fruits, veggies and other ingredients. Well, here's another great way to use a few odds and ends from your fridge- pizza!

We make homemade pizzas often in the cooler months. In the summer, they're relegated to the rare non-sweltering day. I make my own dough and sauce, and bake the pizza on a stone in the oven. Most recently, I used our bounty of summer squash to make a zucchini-basil pizza (on a non-sweltering day, of course).

Normally when I use zucchini as a pizza topping, it's in combination with other vegetables so I just slice it thin and don't bother with pre-cooking. However, I was worried that using zucchini as the only topping might result in a soggy pizza, so this time I gave the sliced squash a quick saute on the stove first.


Here's the rolled-out dough, topped with a slightly spicy homemade sauce from the freezer:


I topped the sauce with a layer of shredded mozzarella, and then the zucchini slices. Moving the raw pizza from the peel to the stone in the oven takes practice, but I've gotten pretty good at it over the years. Still, about once a year we have a pizza disaster that involves raw dough and cheese tumbling onto the floor of the oven, and me running around cursing as the smoke detectors bleat and the dog panics. The resulting mess is NOT fun to clean up.


After baking, I sprinkled on some grated Asiago and some chopped fresh basil.


A little rustic and unrefined in appearance? Yes. Delicious? Yes!

I love trying new combinations of vegetables and cheeses on my pizzas. The only real rule I follow is "restraint." Putting too much stuff on the pizza results in a soggy mess, plus I appreciate the flavors more when there aren't too many ingredients competing with one another. I usually stick to 3 or 4 veggies, a mix of 2-3 cheeses, and one herb. I'll post more of our pizza ideas as the summer and fall progress...

Oh, and think it's too hot to turn the oven on to 500 degrees? Don't despair- you can make great pizza on your grill! A post on that is coming soon...