saucy spinach & pepper pizza

For some reason that I can't recall there was a half sized pizza dough in the freezer. Since it is the weekend tomorrow, and we don't need leftovers to take to work for lunch, I decided this was as good a time as any to use up that small bit of dough. Oh how unfortunate, b/c this was a really tasty pizza, and I'd like to eat it again tomorrow for lunch...

Here is what we had on this pizza...

• a faux cheesy sauce
• steamed spinach
• green onions
• roasted red peppers
• capers
• passed the hot pepper flakes at the table, the sauce had nutritional yeast in it so didn't need to pass that...

A delicious combination of flavors. The roasted red peppers were especially delicious. These were from a huge bag of red bells that I bought recently on sale. I roasted a couple for soup the other night and luckily had some leftover to use on tonights pizza. Although I do still have some roasted peppers in the freezer from the farm this summer. I think I"ll be breaking those out for another roasted pepper pizza again soon... We rated this pizza an 8.5.

spinach

I've been having a love/hate relationship with food throughout my pregnancy. The last month or so my stomach has felt much better but food still tastes just so-so and some things like winter squash, sweet potatos, and some cooking greens are paricularly unappealing. Needless to say this means I have not been particularly creative with pizza (or really any meal) lately. But at least now I have the energy to post our pizza. (I noticed a couple pizza's from November on my camera when I uploaded last night's pics that apparently I completely forgot about.)


Last night's pizza

• homemade whole wheat crust
  
• pesto sauce (from our freezer!)
• onions and mushrooms sauteed in olive oil
  
• spinach
• green bell pepper
• and of course, we passed the nutritional yeast and hot pepper flakes at the table
  

I always love the thought of spinach on pizza and often fall for it when ordering at a pizza place. But of course, especially without any cheese on top of the spinach it always turns crispy and flavorless on a restaurant pizza. We had a pizza like this recently that was very disappointing. To keep my spinach moist and flavorful I saute it just until softened before placing it on the dough. Using frozen spinach would work as well.

This pizza was only so-so, we both rated it a 6. The spinach was great but it just needed a stronger flavor to accompany it. I'm thinking that faux feta would be good or perhaps (for a soy free option) some pickled jalapenos.

Creamy Spinach Flatbread

My last two pizza's had both arugula and potato. K and I fell in love with arugula on pizza when we were biking through Italy. We always saw rucola on the menus and didn't know what it was as the English translation was always "rocket" a term I had never heard. When we finally ordered a pizza with rucola we were thrilled by the nutty taste of the slightly wilted green that I knew as arugula. Now we use it on our own homemade pizza whenever we have some on hand. We were also introduced to potato as a pizza topping on that Italy vacation and have found that we really enjoy that too although not quite as often as arugula. However, as proof that I don't always use these 2 toppings here is an earlier pizza that we really enjoyed.

I started with a homemade creamy spinach sauce on a whole wheat dough and topped that with rings of red pepper and frozen artichoke hearts. And, as always, we passed the hot pepper flakes and nutritional yeast at the table.