This home baked, healthy vegetarian pizza is perfect for your movie nights. It can be easily tweaked to a vegan pizza by just skipping the cheese.
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The much-awaited weekend is here and with it, have come our movie nights. Amit is a big movie buff. He can spend every weekend watching back to back movies and sleeping. I prefer reading and can sit patiently to watch a full only if it’s that kind of great thriller or mystery, where you can’t miss a scene. Amit can’t read for more than 15 minutes at a go :).
I believe that such small differences make a relationship beautiful and after a few initial hiccups, you learn to enjoy these dissimilarities.
Now, on weekdays, before sleeping we together read a good book, even if it’s for just 15 minutes and on weekends we enjoy our movies.
We both prefer watching movies at our cozy home, where we can pause for a snack or loo break, whenever we want, without missing a scene and can even fall asleep while watching it and continue the other day. We go to movie theaters only if a much-awaited movie gets released.
This Thursday night we watched an old movie which was highly recommended by Ruchi didi (my elder sister). We have a very common taste for movies and books so if she recommends something, I know, Amit and I will like it too. The movie was ‘The railwayman’ and we loved it. It surprised me that even Amit hasn’t watched it before, as he has watched almost every good movie released so far.
Generally, on weekdays, we eat normal Indian food roti sabzi or dal chawal and all the other cuisines are reserved for weekends, especially the movie nights.
This Thursday was Pizza night. I also wanted to start baking in my new oven so decided to bake a mushroom capsicum pizza. I am insanely in love with cheese since my childhood days. I remember eating it with everything. Anything that had cheese in it, I ate with gusto. Maybe that’s the reason, I recently developed a lactose allergy and my doctor asked me to avoid milk as much as possible and completely quit cheese. I didn’t mind staying away from milk, I never liked it much, but cheese! I couldn’t imagine quitting it but had no choice. After quitting cheese, I stopped eating pizza outside as it never tasted the same and because of me, Amit also stopped eating it in my presence, which is really sweet of him but I felt bad for him as I know he also loves pizza.
So this weekend, I decided to bake pizza at home, with cheese for him and without cheese for me. It turned out really well and I was delighted when Amit declared that he will never again order pizza from outside.
It was so flavorful that I didn’t even miss the cheese in it. The recipe is also very simple. The best thing is that it’s a healthier version as I used half a portion of whole wheat flour and only half a portion of all-purpose flour (maida) and there was no difference in the taste at all, which I was not expecting. Next time, I will use only whole wheat flour.
Step by step photo instructions
Recipe:
Preparation time: 2 hours
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Serves: 2 (1 medium-sized pizza)
Recipe:
Ingredients for dough:
- Whole wheat flour: 1&1/4 cup
- All-purpose flour: 1&1/4 cup
- Dry yeast: 1 tsp
- Milk: ½ cup
- Salt: ½ tsp
- Sugar: ¼ tsp
- Cooking oil (preferably olive oil): ¾ tablespoon
- Lukewarm water: 1 tablespoon
Ingredients for sauce:
- Tomatoes: 2 large
- Tomato paste: 2 tablespoon
- Olive oil: 1 tablespoon
- Carom seeds (ajwain): ¼ tsp
- Garlic cloves: 5-6 crushed
- Red chili sauce: 1 teaspoon
- Dry oregano: 1 tablespoon (crush between hands)
- Dry basil: 1 tablespoon (crush between hands)
- Black pepper powder: ½ teaspoon
- Chilli flakes: As per taste
- Salt: As per taste
Ingredients for pizza topping:
- Mushroom: 7-8 pieces, sliced
- Capsicum: ½, chopped
- Onion: 1 small, chopped
- Olives: 8-10, sliced
- Mozzarella cheese: 1 cup grated (Since I made half of the pizza without cheese, I used ½ cup only)
- Salt & pepper: as per taste
Method :
Dough:
- To prepare the pizza base dough, mix warm water and sugar in a bowl. Add dry yeast, mix, cover, and leave at a warm place for 12-15 minutes
- Mix the two types of flour in a mixing bowl
- Mix milk, oil, and salt in a pan and heat it for few seconds to make a lukewarm mixture
- When the yeast becomes frothy, add the lukewarm milk mixture to it. Add this milk and yeast mixture to the flour’s mixture and knead well to make a smooth dough
- Brush the dough with oil and cover with a plastic film wrap. Keep covered in a warm place for at least an hour
- After an hour the dough will almost double in size, punch it back to its size and again keep aside, covered for 12-15 minutes
Sauce:
- Blend the tomatoes in a blender to make tomato puree
- In a pan, heat olive oil. Add carom seeds (ajwain) and crushed garlic to it. Fry for around ½ a minute and then add tomato puree
- Once the tomato starts turning red, add the tomato paste and all the remaining ingredients written under sauce ingredients
- Sauté for 2-3 minutes and switch off the gas
Pizza:
- Roll the pizza dough into a pizza base and prick it at a few places with a fork
- Spread a little oil on the pizza baking tray and put the base on top of it
- Spread the sauce on top of the pizza base, leaving the edges
- Add the onion, capsicum, mushroom, and olives and sprinkle salt and pepper to it
- In the end, add grated cheese on the top
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius
- Once the oven is ready, put the pizza tray inside and bake at 180 degrees for 15 minutes and then 200 degrees for 5 minutes
- Take out the pizza, sprinkle your favorite Italian seasoning, make slices with a pizza cutter or knife and enjoy hot while watching your favorite movie
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