♪ ♪
ANNOUNCER: Before you start cooking,
wash hands and surfaces often.
Separate raw meats from other food.
Cook to the right temperature, and refrigerate promptly.
Hi, I'm Robin LaCroix with the Healthy Teaching Kitchen
at the White River Junction VA.
Today we're going to be making a homemade pizza.
We're going to start by preheating our oven
to 420 degrees.
It usually takes about 10 minutes,
so it's good to start before you start your prep.
We're using a pizza pan today, and I'm just going
to drizzle this with a little bit of oil,
so our pizza doesn't stick, and rub that in.
If you have cooking spray, that would work fine.
You can use a pizza stone, or you can even just
use a regular baking sheet if you don't have one of those.
And next, we have a ball of store-bought pizza dough.
I actually bought a whole ball and I'm using half of it today,
because this is to serve two people.
So, I'm putting down a little bit of flour here,
and then we'll put down the dough.
The dough's usually a little sticky
when you get it out of the bag,
so the flour helps just make it easy to use.
So, a little flour on the bottom,
a little flour on the top here,
and just make sure it covers the dough,
so it's not sticking to your hands.
Then you're just going to start stretching it out.
This doesn't have to be perfect, just kind of keep moving around.
There's probably a fancy way to throw this up over the head,
but I'm not willing to give that a try yet!
And once you feel like it's stretched out a bit,
you're just going to lay it down on your baking sheet,
and then continue to push it out a bit so it's fairly even,
a little thicker on the outside.
All right, so now we're ready for our sauce.
We're just using a regular tomato sauce today.
Often, at home, I'll just use some leftover spaghetti sauce
that I have in the fridge.
Either way works fine.
You can buy a regular pizza sauce,
but any tomato sauce or pasta sauce will work just fine,
and you just need enough to cover the base of your pizza.
All right.
And next, to put on our cheese.
We're using a part-skim mozzarella cheese here today.
You can buy mozzarella cheese as whole milk,
but you want to always buy the part-skim,
just another way to reduce your total saturated fat intake.
And, just sprinkle that over your pizza.
Again, this is a nice way to control how much cheese
you put on here.
In addition to mozzarella,
sometimes I like to add some feta.
It adds a nice flavor, without having to add too much.
And then for toppings today, we're using green peppers,
yellow peppers, and red tomatoes.
I'm just going to lay those out on the pizza.
I do find if your tomatoes are juicy,
let them lay on a paper towel for a couple of minutes.
It soaks up some of that juice, so it doesn't get too soggy
on the top of your pizza.
If you like the traditional meat pizza with sausage
and pepperoni, there are some healthier ways to do that.
You can use a chicken sausage, and you buy that precooked,
usually in the meat section of the grocery store.
You can put it in the microwave for a minute
and then just chop it up, and it'll be ready
to pop right on your pizza.
They usually come in a pack of four, and I'll just
put the rest in the freezer and take them out as needed.
So, there we go.
Our pizza is ready to go into the oven.
The pizza takes about 12 to 15 minutes.
I recommend putting it on the middle or low rack
to have it cook the most even.
To test if your pizza is done, there's two things to do.
One is to press down right on the outside.
It'll bounce right back.
Then the other one is to take your spatula
and just pull under.
The whole thing should come up as one piece.
If it's kind of feeling really mushy in the middle,
then it's not quite done and give it a little bit longer.
We're going to let it rest for about 4 to 5 minutes,
and then it'll be ready to slice.
A pizza cutter works best for this, if you have one.
If you don't, a large knife will work as well.
All right.
Now, pizza gets kind of a bad reputation in terms
of nutrition, and that's because people,
often when they eat pizza, they only eat pizza,
so they tend to eat a lot of it.
So, I always serve pizza with a nice, fresh salad.
I think it goes really well, and then you've got
your healthy plate here, half being vegetables
and half being your entrée.
I hope that this recipe gives you a chance to bring
pizza back into your healthy meal plan.
ANNOUNCER: The preceding video was published by
the White River Junction VA Medical Center.
Contact Robin.LaCroix@va.gov.
♪ ♪