Homemade Mushroom Pizza on an Herbed Crust

Crust Ingredients:
-1 C AP Flour
-1/2 C Whole Wheat Flour
-1/8 tsp instant yeast
-Dash salt
-1 TB honey
-1 TB basil
-1/2 TB Rosemary
-Pinch of garlic
-3/4 to 1 C lukewarm water

Mix all of the ingredients, adding water as needed to get to a shaggy, sticky crust.  Cover and let raise overnight.  Pop in it in the fridge the next morning until ready to use.

Have some flour ready in a cup or similar for sprinkling so you don't have to stick your doughy hands in your flour cannister. Sprinkle the top of the dough (I left it in the bowl this time) with flour, sprinkle your pizza pan with cornmeal, and grab the dough out.

Stretch and pull the dough until desired thinness, adding flour on each side as necessary, and plop it on the pizza pan. 

Topping Ingredients:
-4 TB of a 50/50 mix of sour cream or greek yogurt mixed with pesto
-Sauce as desired
-Mushrooms, sliced
-Spinach leaves, sliced
-Cherry tomatoes, sliced
-Desired amount of mozz cheese

Put a thin layer of the pesto mix on the crust, followed by a drizzle of pizza sauce.  Add on topping ingredients and drizzle the crust with olive oil.  Bake at 400 for 18-20 minutes.

This was almost the pizza that never was.  First, I wanted to make a full amount of dough instead of this half batch. However, I realized that either A) the remaining yeast packets are winning hide and seek somewhere in my apartment or B) I had very little yeast left.  Either is equally likely.  I had just enough to make this half batch, so that is what I did...obviously...

Anyway, as soon as I got home from the grocery store this week I was writing out my weekly menu and it hit me like a maglev train that I had no mozzarella...aw crap.  There was no way in the world I was going back to the store at this point, so I had to get creative by the time I whipped this pizza up...

I used string cheese sticks.  I microzested them, even.  I would argue that if you want to cut back on something like cheese, you should microzest it.  If I had a bag of mozz I would have put multiple handfuls on it, heck maybe even the entire bag!  But when I have to shred it myself or even worse when I have to microshred some string cheese (more difficult than you may imagine) I use way less cheese.  And, my pizza still was excellently delicious.

Then of course my crappy pizza cutter annoyed me once again and it now resides in my trash can for being the most dull and unusable pizza cutter ever to exist.  Luckily I have halfway decent knives.

The pizza was delicious, I loved the massive amount of toppings on it as compared to a massive amount of cheese and sauce.  Some places get rather skimpy in their toppings.  Not to mention, just look at how pretty it is!

At this rate, you can about bet that a pizza will be on my menu nearly every week. 

Happy crafting!

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