Kids' Corner Pizza

Kids’ Corner

Whole Wheat Pizza

 

Today's chefs, Aiden & Baileejo

For this week’s Kids Corner I wanted to let the kids make dinner instead of just making a snack.  So, of course they all wanted to make pizza! I don’t blame them, who doesn’t love pizza?  Now you might be thinking that pizza is not healthy so why are we choosing it for the blog.  Well, I personally feel that having a healthy diet does not mean cutting out things that you love.  You can take any dish and add ingredients to make it healthier.   In order to make our pizza healthier, we chose to make our own whole wheat pizza crust, use organic sauce, with fresh mozzarella cheese.  I also added flax seed because of the omegas!

Now, I will be the first to tell you that I cannot come up with my own recipes and this is why I love Pinterest.  I found this whole wheat pizza crust from http://www.yummyhealthyeasy.com.  I also have it under my Pinterest board under pizza. Here is my Pinterest link https://www.pinterest.com/kelejoe23/.    We loved this recipe and found that it was very easy to make.

Pizza Crust

Serves 1 pizza crust

Ingredients

      1 ¾-2 ¼ cups of whole wheat flour

     1 (1/4-oz) envelope pizza yeast

     1 ½ tsp. sugar

     2/3 cup very warm water (120-130 degrees

     3 Tbsp. olive oil
     2 Tbsp. Flax seed

Instructions

     Preheat oven to 425ºF.

     Combine 1 cup flour, undissolved yeast, sugar, salt and flax seed  in a large bowl. Add water and 3 Tbsp. olive oil. Mix until blended, about 1 minute.

     Gradually add enough remaining flour until a soft ball is formed. Dough will be somewhat sticky.

     Knead dough on a floured surface, adding more flour if needed. About 4 minutes, until smooth and elastic.

     Pat dough to fill out greased pizza pan. Add toppings as desired, bake for approximately 10-15 minutes, depending on amount of toppings. Enjoy!

For the pizza sauce, we just blended some fresh roma tomatoes and mixed it with some organic spaghetti sauce.  I like for my pizza to have lots of sauce and flavor. For me, the sauce is what makes the pizza and I have not yet found a 100% homemade sauce that we all love.  So, if we do not make something from scratch, then we will buy organic so it is not highly processed.  It is our goal for our family to stay away from processed foods as much as we can. 

Pizza Sauce

     Serves for 2 pizzas

     3 Roma tomatoes blended

     2 cups of organic spaghetti sauce

     (Depending on how many pizzas and how much sauce you like, will depend how much ingredients to use)

For toppings we used fresh mozzarella and the kids really wanted pepperoni.  Because pepperoni is a processed meat and has sodium nitrates in it, we do not have it that often and they did not go overboard when adding it to their pizza.  It’s okay to not be perfect all the time.  We go buy 80% of the time we are healthy and the other 20% is to live on the edge! 

We are big Utah Football fans and Baileejo had to make a U out of pepperoni! Go Utes!

Helpful hints:

Like most kids, my children will not eat something if they see something on the food that they do not like.  It is easy to add veggies to any sauce.  I will blend vegetables when my kids are not looking and add them to the sauce.  Then they think they are just eating a plain pepperoni pizza. 

For Dads and moms, add vegies that you love to make it healthier.  If the kids see you eating a pizza loaded with vegies, then eventually they will try it and hopefully love it.