by Kathleen Richardson

Created on: August 30, 2008   Last Updated: November 29, 2008

Pizza is an opportunity to reinvent old tastes and textures and to explore new ones. The traditional spread of a basil and oregano seasoned tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and pepperoni on flat, circular shaped bread dough is one that all have embraced for years. Now health conscious beyond any expectations and yet still seeking to titillate the taste buds and stimulate the optical nerves, pizza lovers are branching out in an attempt invent a colorful, flavorful and wholesome pizza that everyone from wee ones to senior citizens will find to their liking.

Pizzas now come decked out in tomato sauce, white sauce and no sauce. Meated toppings range from chicken to beef to pork and seafood, in every shape and form. Cheese is no longer confined to mozzarella. Instead it's mixed and matched in every way imaginable.

Vegetables have always adorned pizza in some minor way. Dot them with mushrooms, highlight them with whole garlic cloves or mix and match an assortment depending on likes and dislikes. If eating out, the cost goes up according to the number of toppings.

A favorite, basic vegetable pizza is topped with tomato sauce, plus small pieces or slices of broccoli, mushroom, green or red peppers, and onions. That's just a beginning and there's a world of choice, again based on the consumer's taste buds and likes or dislikes.

Pizza dough can be homemade. It is, however, available in various sizes at most supermarkets - white or whole wheat, cooked just a few minutes in the store to stop the dough rising and to shorten your cooking time at home.

Sauce, too, can be a simple home concoction tomato sauce (or paste and water), seasoned with herbs such as basil, oregano and crushed red pepper flakes, any of which compliments the tomato base.

Some vegetables such as eggplant require precooking, as least partially. Most, however, will cook after placed on the pizza and in a very hot oven, as long as they have been slivered, sliced or diced into small enough pieces. Vegetable pizzas seem to fare well with the sauce as the base layer, followed by cheeses and then topped with veggies. It's tempting to heap vegetables high. A thin layer spread loosely over the top is a good way to start. After seeing and tasting the results, consideration can be given to which vegetables will go well if greater amounts are used. There's a fine balance so that none of the ingredients - crust, sauce, cheeses or vegetables - overwhelm each other.

The economical approach to vegetable pizza would be to

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