by Scott Steehn

Created on: May 11, 2009

Looking for ways to making pizza a healthy meal? Step one, go to the store and grab some lettuce. Step two, bring lettuce home. Step three, throw away pizza and make a salad. Okay, maybe that's a little drastic. Let's take a look at some real ways to make pizza a healthy alternative.

The Crust

If our healthy pizza is a house, then the crust is the foundation. You can build the fanciest mansion known to man, but if your foundation isn't stablewell you know what happens. The results aren't pretty. So in order to build our healthy pie, we need to start with a healthy crust.

The key is whole-wheat flour. While white flour has virtually no nutritional value, 100% whole-wheat flour is a tremendous source of calcium, protein, and fiber. In fact, after wheat becomes milled and processed into white flour, vitamins and minerals must be artificially inserted in order to meet the minimum nutritional standards as required by federal law. Whole-wheat flour uses all edible parts of the wheat berry, which allows all of the nutrients and fiber to remain intact.

The recipe is extremely simple:

25 oz. pkt. active dry yeast
1/4 tsp. granulated sugar
3/4 cup 110 degree water
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt

Add yeast to water, then add the sugar. Stir. Let stand until foamy (approx. 10 minutes). Meanwhile, combine salt and flour in processor. When yeast is ready, turn on processor and add yeast mixture to flour slowly through feeder tube. Dough will form in processor into a ball. (If dough does not ball-up feed more water a couple of drops at a time.) Sprinkle flour on a hard, flat surface and through dough ball down very hard five times. Then, brush olive on to dough ball, place in large bowl, covering tightly with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature at least one hour. Your ball of dough should approximately double in size. Cut your ball in half and you now have enough dough to make two 12-inch, thin crust pizzas.

One last note about the crust. If you absolutely, positively can not or will not even TRY and make your own crust, the one whole wheat pizza crust I've been able to find is from Boboli. About four bucks for a package of two, twelve-inch crusts and honestly they're not too bad. If you're making a large number of pies or don't have much time, these are a pretty good alternative.

The Sauce

Most red pizza sauces are fat-free and fairly low in calories. The bad news? Most

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>