Healthy homemade pizza recipes

You don’t feel like cooking, but you want something relatively healthy and appetizing. Don’t call for pizza delivery; it’s not great value for your money and not nearly as good as homemade pizza. With store-bought pizza dough (or homemade if you have the time), you can make a much more delicious pizza with minimum effort -- all in the time it takes for a delivery to arrive.

Pizza basics: dough, sauce, cheese
Dough, tomato sauce and cheese – that’s all you need for the basics. Here's the quickest recipe using quick-rising or instant yeast. You can adjust it by replacing up to two-thirds of the flour with whole wheat, whole spelt or multigrain flour if you wish (I personally prefer about one-quarter to one-third whole wheat or spelt); if you prefer, use traditional yeast (sprinkle it over some of the warm water until it foams, then mix in with the remaining water, which should be just lukewarm):

Basic Quick Pizza Dough recipe
Whisk together 2-3/4cups/675 mL all-purpose flour (or mixed flours) 2 tsp/10 mL quick-rising (instant) yeast, 1 tsp/5 mL salt and a generous 1/4 tsp/1 mL black pepper. Stir in 1-1/4 cups/300 mL hot (120F/50C) water and 1-1/2 tbsp/22 mL olive oil until ragged dough forms. Turn out onto lightly floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, adding up to 1/4cup /60 mL more flour as necessary. Place in greased bowl, turning to grease all over. Cover and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour, or let rise in refrigerator 24 hours. (Freeze in plastic bag for up to 1 month; thaw in refrigerator for 24 hours) Makes about 1-1/2 lb/750 g dough, enough for one 14-inch/35 cm pizza.

Easy sauce
The easiest tomato sauce you can use is simply bottled strained tomatoes (passata). I sometimes use it myself when I don’t feel like a real sauce, but a really good quick and easy sauce is Tomato Pizza Sauce.

Neapolitan
You have the dough and the sauce, now some cheese. Personally, one of my favourites is a Neapolitan pizza (named after the birthplace of pizza, Naples). This means a little fresh mozzarella, then bake it and top the hot pizza with fresh basil leaves. I usually will sprinkle a small handful of finely grated Romano or Parmesan over the sauce, too, and I will always top it with some anchovies. Olives are nice, too. A pinch of dried hot pepper is nice, too – the list goes on.